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5 Tips for Vaping in the Cold

Spring is just around the corner, but at the moment we’re still in the grip of the cold winter. The chilly weather can be a real hassle not just for driving or being able to feel your nose, but also for vaping.
These handy tips will keep you vaping even when it’s nippy out.

 Look after your electronic cigarette battery.

Cold weather interferes with batteries in the most annoying way possible; it stops them from keeping their full charge capacity.
This means that when your e-cig battery gets cold it doesn’t last as long as it should.
This is to do with the chemical energy stored in the battery. The process to convert that back to electrical energy requires the electrons in the lithium to start moving and as high-school physics taught us, when something is cold it just means the atoms are moving less than normally.

At -10C a battery can lose up to 30% of its full charge. At just a few degrees below 0 you’re going to get noticeably less time out of your e-cig battery than you would during warmer days.
This is compounded if you’re using a sub-ohm cloud tank, which draws power from your battery much faster than a regular clearomiser would. You might even find yourself with 50% of your full battery capacity!
Keep your e cig mod in an inner pocket close to you when you’re out and about instead of carrying it in your hand to keep your battery at least a little warmer.

 Keep an eye on your e-liquid

E-Liquid is thicker than water, as standard, and a high propylene glycol (PG) concentration gives it a very low freezing point (in fact, PG is sometimes added into antifreeze products to make the antifreeze less toxic).

E-Liquids with high vegetable glycerine (VG) content are a little more problematic. Pure vegetable glycerine freezes at 13 degrees, although with all the other ingredients in e-liquid that number is lowered dramatically.
Don’t worry, you’re not going to end up with a solid block of ice unless you’re in the arctic.
Low temperatures can, however, make your e-liquid much more viscous, more gloopy basically, which can make it much harder for your tank to wick.
This can lead to dry burns and sometimes it can lead to your cotton wicks burning out completely. Try to keep your e-liquid and your tank warm to avoid this.
You may also notice your menthol e-liquids start to form menthol crystals, which don’t affect the e-liquid at all (they dissolve back into the liquid when they warm up) but are really interesting to look at.

 Avoid Metal Drip Tips

Metal drip tips look great, and they’ve almost become the standard on most tanks these days. The trouble is they can cause a real problem when they get really cold.
We’ve all seen that situation in a comedy show where someone gets stuck to a freezing metal pole, but the danger is real with your e-cig’s drip tips, especially with newer styles that are designed to stay cool when they’re right beside a very hot coil. The heat resisting materials they use also stop your relatively warm mod and tank from warming the drip tip, meaning it’ll be much colder than the surrounding tank.
Freezing metal getting stuck to the soft, sensitive skin of your lip is not a pleasant experience and can even cause some real harm.
Your best bet in cold weather is to get yourself a plastic drip tip, or even glass. Anything but metal, really.

 Avoid Moisture around your E-Cig

In winter, especially when it’s snowing or raining, you tend to end up soaked.
This can be a problem when it comes to your e-cigs.
As electrical items they’re very susceptible to water damage, and if they somehow get soaking wet too it’s possible that may even be the end of them. It’s unlikely, but it happens.

Keeping your devices in a case, or at the very least in a pocket deep within the many layers you ought to be wearing when it’s cold out will keep them from the worst of it.
Even a relatively water resistant bag can keep them away from harm.
You just want to make sure that if they do get wet or collect a little condensation, you let them dry out completely before you try to charge them. You definitely do not want to be plugging wet electrical items into the mains, that’s an easily avoidable calamity waiting to happen.

 Be careful you don’t drop your Mod.

When it’s cold you wear gloves, right? That’s just common sense.
Remember the saga of trying to smoke with gloves on? They end up stinking of smoke, they get little holes burned in them that let the cold air in, and it’s difficult to do pretty much anything, let alone actions that require fine motor control.
All that is gone with an e-cig and you’d think it would be plain sailing.
However, wearing gloves puts your electronic cigarette or mod into a situation where they face the greatest risk to vape gear: being dropped.
Dropping a smaller eGo-Style e cig is often not an issue, but with bigger, heavier mods like an Innokin Cool Fire IV Plus, or anything with a glass clearomiser is often the final sentence for that device. Cracked glass, rattled wire connections, threads torn off your atomiser connection, we’ve seen it all and it’s always down to a drop.

So if you’re wearing gloves be extra careful that your mod doesn’t simply slip out of your grip and go cannoning into the cold, hard ground (which might also get your mod soaking wet, too!) because there’s nothing worse on a miserable day than breaking your favourite device.

Keep these tips in mind out there and your vaping life will be so much easier, at least until it gets a little warmer and we can all hang up our winter coats and our mod-dropping gloves.

So take a look around TABlites.com, pick up your new electronic cigarette, grab an exotic flavour, maybe TABlites Premium Range Mango or Passionfruit, and pretend it’s summertime.

The chilly months will just fly by.

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