Light Work In Machrihanish

Light Work in Machrihanish Around 1899, when enlarging and rebuilding the mansion house at Losset, Captain Macneal decided to put in electric light and too put lights into the Ugadale Arms Hotel which also lay on his property at Machrihanish. The installation work was given to Messrs. Ernest Scott & Mountain, assisted by Messrs. Carrick & Ritchie. To provide sufficient water power, a 300,000 gallon basin, Loch-an-t-solus, was excavated in a hollow of the burn which flows seaward from Kilypole Loch. A 208-foot long concrete dam, 10-feet in depth and 2-feet in width was built with a 1,400 yard long pipe leading to the turbine power house, the first 300 yards of pipe from the dam being of 13-inch diameter and the following 1,100 yards being reduced to 12-inch diameter. The ‘No 3 Gerrard’ 70 horsepower turbine was driven by the fall of water now dropping some 230-feet from the loch. The turbine was fitted with a regulating gate, which could be operated by hand, or by governor, so that the quantity of water used was regulated exactly to the demand for water power without any loss in pressure and that the highest possible efficiency was obtained when the machine was running light on a diminished water supply, its speed being 450 rpm. A 3½-inch steel countershaft, driven by a 10-inch link-belt from the turbine, was suspended in the dynamo room (above the turbine room) from overhead steel beams and, from this countershaft, four pulleys then drove the dynamos, the home farm’s threshing mill, hay cutter and pulper and the estate’s saw-mill. Two compound ‘Tyne’ dynamos, the main, powering up to 600 ‘16-candlepower’ lights and the pilot dynamo, powering up to 100 lights. The three-panelled switchboard was fitted with two voltmeters reading up to 200-volts, three ampmeters, a changing switch and a discharging switch for the accumulator batteries, two automatic cutout switches and 16 single-pole change-over switches. Above the dynamo room were 110 9-candlepower ‘E.P.S.’ accumulators capable of storing sufficient power to allow 100 ‘16-candlepower’ lights to operate for up to nine consecutive hours. These accumulators were connected to the switchboard in such a manner as would allow either accumulators or dynamo or both to be used together at any one time. In practice, the accumulators would come into use at midnight when the turbine would be shut off for the night. From the power house, the 220-volt current was taken some 700-yards along three pairs of insulated aerial copper wires, supported on creosoted pine poles which carried cross-pieces having brown earthenware insulators fixed to them. Steel suspending wire was fixed to the top insulators, to which the cables between the poles was attached by means of raw hide suspenders and to the lower pole insulators. The wires then branched west to the hotel and east to the other villas, the furthest of these being some 2,000 yards distant. A heavily insulated underground cable carrying the current from the dynamo house to the mansion at Losset Park itself. The supply was connected to allow 240 ‘16-candlepower’ lights at Losset, 230 similar lights at the hotel and, respectively at the then six villas, a further 61, 50, 35, 35, 22 and 40 ‘16-candlepower’ lights, not all of which were expected to be in use at any one point in time ! The main supply was carried only to the boudaries of each feu and the ‘feuars’ then responsible for their own connections and installations in their houses, each house being fitted with an ‘Avon’ meter to record power consumption and these being read on the first day of each month by the estate electrician who entered readings in a triplicated book. with one copy going to the householder, one to the estate office and the third retained at the powerhouse. A charge of 1/- (5p) per unit was made for each of the first 200 units consumed and 6d (2½p) per unit thereafter with a minimum monthly charge of £3 for houses with less than 40 lamps, £5 for those with more. The accounts were rendered half-yearly and ‘feuars’ were in turn required to collect any portions due from tenants who had sub-let the villas during the holiday season, the villas in this golfers’ ‘Mecca of The West’ fetching increased rentals thanks to the new electricity supply. For the curious, ‘candle-power’ equals light from the flame of a standard, 2.66 ounce / 75.6 gram, candle burning at the rate of 120 grains / 7.78 grams per hour. The term ‘candle-power’ has now been superseded by the ‘candela’ giving about 0.0015 watts per ‘steradian’ in a given direction ! A ‘steradian’ is”a unit of solid angle equal to the angle subtended at the centre of a sphere by an area on its surface equal to the square of its radius. The whole surface subtends an angle of 4o steradian at the centre” - and, 1 horsepower = 735.5 watts !

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