Publication Account

Date 1988

Event ID 636056

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/636056

The North of Scotland Hydro-electric Board's plan for Constructional Scheme No. 7 (Mullardoch-Fasnakyle-Affric) was published in Fenruary 1946; there were no objections on fishery or amenity grounds. Labour camps were established at Cannich and Cozac (near Mullardoch).

The Mullardoch Dam (at the E end of Loch Mullardoch) was destined to be the Board's largest dam, measuring 2385ft [727.1m] long by 160ft [48.8m] high above itseepest foundations. Its construction required 286,000 cu ft of concrete to impound no less than 7.5 million cu ft of water. An even larger volume of materials would have been required, had it not been possible to build the dam in the form of two wings inclining towards each other and abutting onto an island.

The dam is of mass gravity type, and in late 1949, when the N wing was already well advanced, it was necessary to economise. The option of completing the S wing to a buttress gravity design was rejected on account of the inevitable delays in revising the shuttering and plant layout, with resulting increases in labour and logistic counts. In the event, it was decided in March 1950 to reduce the height of the S wing by 20ft [6.1m]. This was countermanded in February 1951, but the wing was completed to a revised design based on that used for the Mundaring Weir (Australia), which did not require the insertion of steel bonds. The dam was completed in summer 1952, some time after partialimpounding had begun.

P L Payne 1988.