How Your Vape Juice Affects the Life of Your Coils
Guest Post by Jason Artman
How often do you replace the coil in your vape tank or pod system? Do your coils last weeks at a time – as some manufacturers often claim – or do you actually find yourself installing a new coil every day or two?
If your coils only last a couple of days, have you ever stopped to think about how much that actually costs? These days, the coils for some tanks are approaching £3-5 each. If you’re buying a box of coils every few days at £12-15 or more – plus the amount that you spend on e-liquid – your vaping expenses are actually beginning to approach the amount of money that you would spend on cigarettes if you were a smoker.
Vaping was never supposed to be that way. Vaping isn’t just better than smoking because there’s no smoke; it’s also better than vaping because it’s significantly cheaper – at least, it’s supposed to be.
So, why is it that your coils never seem to last as long as the manufacturers say they will? As it turns out, the longevity of a coil often doesn’t have much to do with the coil itself. Rather, it is your choice of vape juice that ultimately influences whether the coil lasts for days or weeks. Reading this article, you’re going to learn the different aspects of your e-liquid that help – or hinder – the life of your coils.
Sweetener Affects Coil Life
More than anything else, the aspect of e-liquid that affects coil life is whether or not the e-liquid contains the sweetener sucralose. Sucralose is sold in stores under the brand name Splenda. It tastes extremely similar to sugar, and it’s used as an e-liquid sweetener because it’s readily available in liquid form and is therefore extremely easy to add to vape juice. It tastes great, and it can make an e-liquid with a dessert or candy flavour profile seem extremely true to life.
The problem with sucralose is that, although it does taste great, it doesn’t vaporize. You’d see an illustration of this if you dissolved some sucralose in water and boiled the mixture on your stovetop. The water would boil away – and the vapour would smell sweet – but most of the sucralose would remain in the saucepan, eventually bubbling and darkening like caramel.
The same thing happens when you use a sweetened vape juice. The sucralose creates a layer of dark residue on your coil, and the residue becomes thicker as you continue to vape. Eventually, the residue becomes so thick that a flavour resembling that of burnt sugar becomes all that you can taste when vaping. Replacing the coil is the only thing you can do at that point.
How to choose your vape juice for maximum coil life: Avoid sweetened e-liquids as much as possible.
VG/PG Ratio Affects Coil Life
When you buy almost any bottle of vape juice, you’ll see the VG/PG ratio of that e-liquid on the bottle’s label. Most people think of VG/PG ratio as a way to customise their vaping experience or choose the vape juice that’ll work best with their vaping hardware. As you may already know, a larger sub-ohm vape tank tends to work best with a thicker e-liquid. Smaller vaping devices usually work better with thin e-liquids. In addition, a thicker e-liquid also tends to produce fuller vapour clouds.
What you may not know, though, is that an e-liquid’s VG/PG ratio can also affect coil life. Perhaps because it is so thick, pure vegetable glycerine doesn’t vaporize quite as cleanly as propylene glycol. An e-liquid made only from VG – even if it contains no sweeteners or flavours – will leave residue that shortens the life of your coil.
How to choose your vape juice for maximum coil life: An e-liquid with a 50/50 VG/PG ratio doesn’t kill coils quickly and will work fine even with very large sub-ohm vape tanks.
Flavours Affect Coil Life
The flavours in your e-liquid may seem fairly innocuous, but the fact is that some flavours – particularly those that are darker in colour – often leave residue on coils because they don’t vaporize fully when they’re heated.
Tobacco extract is one of the worst offenders in this area. E-liquid with naturally extracted tobacco – or NET – is very rare in vape shops today because tobacco extracts don’t really taste all that much like tobacco and as a result aren’t that popular. If you do happen to find an e-liquid containing NET, though, be warned that it may to reduced coil longevity because tobacco extracts often contain particulate matter that sticks to the coil and burns. Several other flavouring agents also shorten coil life. Menthol, however, does not leave residue on a vape coil.
How to choose your vape juice for maximum coil life: Select an e-liquid with a neutral, mild flavour for maximum coil life. Heavily flavoured e-liquids will tend to leave residue on your coil, even if they contain no added sweeteners.
Vape Juice Consumption Affects Coil Life
The last factor that you need to consider with regard to how your e-liquid effects your coil life is how much e-liquid you’re actually using. Substances in your e-liquid that are detrimental to coil life will have an even greater impact if you use more vape juice. If you’re a long-term vaper, that’s probably why you’re reading this article now even though you’ve never had to think too much about coil life in the past. You probably upgraded to a more powerful tank and found that your coils don’t last as long as they once did. Well, now you know the reason. The more vape juice you use, the shorter your coil life will be if your e-liquid contains any ingredients that tend to leave residue behind.
How to choose your vape juice for maximum coil life: Consider switching to a low-output vaping device such as a pod system. Using a low-wattage device reduces your e-liquid consumption and will increase coil life – even if you’re using a heavily sweetened vape juice.
