Can you say hot topic? I’m going to start by saying the wall will change some parts of America for ever…I’m not talking about the political fight that has been brewing for almost three years, I’m referring to the changes that are scaring the country side forever, I’m talking about the lives of the men that have came from all parts of this great country to work long hard days. I’m talking about the temporary economies that is being created around the wall that will totally collapse after the work is done, or moves to a different section, so each little town booms and crashes as the wall builders come and go.

Some wall facts:

• There is 1933 miles of border between Mexico and the US
• 1279 miles have no pedestrian barrier at all

• Estimated cost of $20,000,000 per mile that’s $45 billion total
• The wall is 30 feet high and fabricated in 8 foot sections of steel

In the photo above you can see the Mex-2 highway just over the border, this is obviously just a vehicle barrier as any one can just step over or crawl under the barrier. It also allows the native wildlife to freely pass by, this is one of the overlooked fatalities caused by the new wall, there will be many larger animals that will no longer move freely to and from some of their natural habitats. It has been said that some species will not survive the wall, true or false I don’t know but food for thought. Through the National Monument all the cactus that were in the way were to be relocated, I understand that this is not happening, not my personal knowledge but my research has indicated it more than once, that these majestic, century old cactus are just being destroyed. There are also native burial grounds that on the border as the wall will divide some of the native tribes that share land on both sides of the border for decades.

I do not have personal knowledge (although actually I just watched a YouTube video of people scaling the new wall, using a rope ladder with a couple of hooks that attach to the top), but have spoken to some of the people building the wall, and while it is thirty feet high and is set in an excavated trench that is approximately four feet deep and is filled with concrete. The determination of people has always amazed me, wether it is scaling the new wall and or tunnelling under it as they are doing at the old fencing already, as a number of articles point out if these people are willing to endure the scaling of mountains and summer desert temperatures exceeding 100 degrees that are the natural separation of the countries, this wall will be little more than just one more obstacle on their way to the promised land.

Now for my opinion of the wall and keep in mind I don’t have a horse in this race…first of all I do not believe that any person should be able to just walk across any international border without some form of consequence, that having been said I just see this thirty foot wall as a very tall and expensive line in the sand. It is my understanding that there will still need to be some kind of electronic monitoring device even with the wall, so why not just work on a totally electronic solution. I just keep thinking how many people and veterans could be helped with 45 billion dollars, with so many great causes that are being under funded, is this really the best use of the taxpayers dollars? This will be a debated topic for years to come, and it is a topic that has divided friends and families, so I don’t have any a side to pick, as I truly am neutral on this one, wall or no wall, I don’t see this problem going away any time soon…the way I see it…just saying

Well yesterday was a busy day, at least in my little world, as I started into installing our new lithium batteries. Now I knew this was going to be a major undertaking, after all I was removing four six volt golf cart AGM lead batteries so a series / parallel configuration , and installing the four twelve volt golf cart sized lithium batteries in a parallel only configuration.

Now add to that that they are located on a slide tray in an open compartment at the rear of the coach, so a bit of a dirty location, and the connections were a little suspect before, notice the temporary installation of a shunt to let us monitor our battery condition. That has been moved and properly mounted.

To add to the challenge the fact that the tray was custom made for the present batteries and the new batteries don’t quite fit, so yesterday was a long day of deciding how to overcome these little obstacles. I was able to cut most of the cables and shorten them to work for now, I had previously purchased the lugs and the hydraulic crimper, I should have upgraded my cutters as 2/0 cable was almost too much for my old side cutters.

Today has me finishing the temporary install of only four of the batteries, but this will actually give us over a one hundred amp hours more that the previous battery bank. Hoping to run a test tomorrow, by unhooking from shore power and enjoying a normal night, I will fire the boiler to simulate a cold evening of boondocking, and checking the battery condition in the morning.

So I have connected the new battery bank to the coach system and have the solar connected to top the batteries up, so that I can reset the shunt to zero to give me a true status of the battery condition, and the true SOC (state of charge).

Day 800