You clean your kitchen and your bathroom, wash your laundry and your car, but how often do you clean your ecig? Just as with everything else in our lives, a clean ecig performs better, lasts longer and is more appealing than one that’s caked with dried ejuices, dead skin cells or just plain gunk. Here are a few tips for keeping your vape in tip-top shape.
Battery
Starting with the biggest culprit, your battery. Its terminal can easily collect dirt and grime from constantly threading your charger on and off, or from your tank or atomizer. Sometimes a little liquid may drip onto the terminal, or maybe over time the oils from your hands have mixed with dust to make a sticky residue. Take a cotton swab and dab a little rubbing alcohol onto one end, use it to gently wipe away the mess from your battery connections. For seriously stuck-on dirt, use a toothpick or dental floss pick to scrape it away first before finishing with the cotton swab. Make sure to let the battery fully dry before using again. This goes double for removable batteries. Seriously, make sure you check both contacts and both sides of your battery for buildup. Not only will this look better when you’re done, but electricity will be able to flow much more efficiently to the parts that need it the most.
Charger
Just like the battery terminal, the charger can also collect grime. To clean, disconnect the charger from any power, of course, and follow the same steps as with the battery’s contacts to clean the charger’s contacts. A dirty charger can lead to reduced efficiency, meaning the batteries will take longer to charge, or possibly fail to charge all together. There is nothing worse than charging a battery overnight only to discover that because the connections were dirty, your battery is still dead. This wastes a ton of time but also leaves you without a way to vape.
Tanks and Atomizers
Tanks and atomizers can also be cleaned, giving you a more efficiently running tank, and a better tasting vaping experience. Once again, make sure you clean the contact or the bottom of the atomizer. Batteries have them, chargers have them, and tanks and atomizers have them, and they all work better when they are cleaned. Just rub the tanks threading and the contact with a cotton swab lightly moistened with rubbing alcohol. Again it is also important to make sure this has fully dried before use. We all know moisture and electricity don’t mesh.
The contact and atomizer aren’t the only parts of a tank that can get gummed up. The tank can get pretty dirty inside and out. When possible you will want to try to use distilled water to clean the insides of a tank or atomizer. If that’s not available warm water can be used, but try to dry your tank as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Tap water is full of all kinds of minerals that can collect inside your tank leaving a cloudy mess that can affect the way your atomizer does its job. Never use alcohol on the inside of your tank and atomizer. Sure its effective at cleaning goo from those hard to reach places, but we have enough trouble avoiding the alcohol in bad ejuice, without introducing it to the insides of our tanks ourselves. A good soaking in hot water will do a lot to loosen the gunk in every corner of your tank.
The atomizer or heating element can also be cleaned. Wipe down the outside to dab up any excess liquid, and remove any gunk that has built up around the intake holes. Then, blow through the element lightly from the bottom two or three times. This will clear out fluid trapped internally. Wipe down the element with a paper towel, and let it sit while the rest of your components dry. This may prolong the life of your heating element, but remember nothing is better than putting a brand new coil in place after giving your tank a good cleaning. Cleaning your coil cannot be done as efficiently as other components, so you may still have lingering flavor from the last ejuice you used. Only you can decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Mouthpiece
Last but certainly not least, your mouthpiece/ drip tip can easily play host to all manner of gunk and bacteria. It is not only dealing with the buildup from ejuice and dirt like the rest of your device, but also any food, dirt, lip gunk, and dirt your mouth is exposed to. This part should be cleaned often. Fortunately, cleaning the mouthpiece is super simple. You can start with the daily task of wiping lip gunk from the outside of the tip. For you chap stick or lip gloss wearers out there, this may need to be done more than once a day. You can also give your drip tip/mouthpiece a hot soak once in a while to break up the buildup on the inside and out. Alcohol swabs can be used to disinfect your tip, but make sure to thoroughly rinse before use.
Pink Spot Vapors also offers a wide range of replacement components to keep your vape fresh. Check out our full selection of tanks and atomizers to keep the best taste and cloud production, or take a look at line replacement batteries and chargers to keep your vape charged. Don’t forget to stock up on your favorite gourmet ejuices, too!
