6 Ways to Stop Burning Your Coils
You’re puffing away without a care in the world. Your clouds are plentiful and your taste buds sing with flavor. All is good. Then, all of a sudden, it happens. You move to hit your mod - and are met by a noxious cloud of charred cotton and betrayal scorching down your throat. Okay, you get the point. Your coil is burnt. We’ve all been there, and we know how much it sucks. That’s why we’ve prepared this handy list of tips to help you maximize your coil’s lifespan and prevent those infamous dry hits from ruining your day.
1. Always Prime Your Coils
Forgetting to prime your coil is consigning yourself to disaster right out of the gate. (Alright, we’ll stop with the hyperbole.) But seriously, making sure your coil is primed before first usage is paramount. Brand new coils need to be completely saturated with e-juice before they’re used. The cotton wicking they’re made of will burn very quickly if not adequately saturated, or if they’re “dry fired.”
The best way to prime your coil is simple. Fill your tank with e-liquid once the new coil is installed and wait 10-15 minutes for the cotton to saturate. For those of you that simply can’t wait that long, try dripping two or three drops of e-liquid onto all of the coil’s side ports where the wick is exposed allowing time to saturate between each drop. Some vapers like to gently inhale on the tank- without firing- to ensure there are no dry spots in the cotton. If you choose to do this, beware not to inhale too hard at the risk of flooding the coil.
2. Don’t Let Your Tank Run on Empty
When you fire a mod, the e-liquid absorbs some of the heat produced by the atomizer as it’s vaporized. If there’s too little juice in your tank, your cotton wick bears the brunt of the atomizer’s electric current and runs the risk of burning. Besides that, cotton can’t soak up e-liquid where there isn’t any, leading to diminished flavor and drier hits. Consider refilling your tank any time the wicking ports on your coil are not submerged in juice. Some coils, like the Uwell Valyrian, include minimum fill lines to let you know when they need tending to. Some vapers rotate their tanks to distribute the remaining juice evenly across the wick, but this method is less reliable than simply refilling.
3. Reduce or Avoid Chain Vaping
Vaping like an ornery dragon is fun, but it comes at the detriment of your coil. Cotton wick needs time to re-saturate itself between hits. (At the very least, ten to fifteen seconds.) Taking several long drags in quick succession doesn’t give the coil time to catch up - even if the tank is full. Hitting a coil that’s still dry from the previous hit is nearly equivalent to dry firing it. Weakened flavor is the best red flag that you’re puffing too fast and may need to slow down for your coil’s sake.
3. Adjust Your Wattage
Cranking up the wattage you vape at creates a similar problem to chain vaping. In that, coils won’t have enough time to re-absorb e-liquid before the next hit. If your hits aren’t packing much flavor even after minutes of waiting, overpowered wattage might be the culprit. Most coils come with recommended watt settings on them. Try a few puffs at the minimum recommended wattage if you suspect you’re pushing your coil too hard. If that doesn’t yield proper flavor, work your way up in five watt increments until the hits start tasting like they should.
Vaping at too low of a wattage won’t do your coil any favors either. As mentioned above, e-liquid acts as insulation for the coil when it’s being vaporized. If you’re vaping at thirty or forty watts below what your coil can handle, the atomizer’s current has trouble vaporizing the juice in the cotton wick. The coil then has to work overtime to vaporize the juice and deal with the current.
4. Be Mindful of E-Juice With Lots of Sweetener
Most e-juices will include sweeteners and other additives that increase taste. However, brands that contains higher levels of sweetener do cause significant gunk buildup in coils. Sugars caramelize under extreme heat, whether they’re baked into a cake or vaporized by an atomizer. Caramelized gunk clogs a coil’s cotton wick, leading to the same problems we’ve gone over.
Heavy/dark e-liquid flavors are liable to gunk up your coil given enough time. Even if a dessert flavored e-liquid doesn’t have added sweetener, dessert flavors themselves can suffer from caramelization.
5. Higher PG Ratio
If you have tried the methods above and are still experiencing issues your ejuice could be too thick for your coil. Vegetable glycerin takes longer to soak into a coil than propylene glycol because of its viscosity. You could vape two bottles of the same e-juice mixed with different ratios, and your coil will undoubtedly have a tougher time absorbing the higher VG blend. Try choosing a higher PG ratio on your next bottle of e-juice. The rebalanced ingredients should give your coil less hassle. Most vape companies print the ratios on the labels - so you can make an informed decision about which one’s right for you.
In Conclusion
Maximizing the lifespan of any coil takes intentionality, and a little bit of finesse. Think of it as more of an art than a science. (Well, it’s both really.) If you can find the goldilocks zone between wattage, e-liquid, and time between puffs, you’ll be amazed at how consistently satisfying your vaping experiences become. We hope these tips have offered some insight! Happy vaping from your friends at LNW.