Vaping is supposed to be pleasurable and relaxing. It’s neither of those things, though, if your vape makes a loud popping sound whenever you press the fire button. If your vape tank happens to spit hot e-liquid into your mouth at the same time – as tanks that are prone to popping often do – that’s twice as annoying. Isn’t it possible to get your vape tank to operate more quietly?
As a matter of fact, it is. Before we make some suggestions that can help you fix your popping vape, though, it’s important to understand why you’re hearing the popping sound in the first place. Inside your vape coil is at least one heating wire twisted into a spring shape. If you’re using a high-end coil, it probably has several wires. If you could examine those wires extremely closely, you’d find that the curved shape of a wire creates lots of hills and valleys when you twist the wire into a coil shape.
Now, imagine what the hills and valleys of a coil look like when you wrap a cotton pad around the coil. The hills would touch the cotton, but the valleys wouldn’t. If the wire is very thick – as it the case with many of today’s low-resistance coils – the valleys would be quite deep. Have you noticed that your vape tank is more likely to pop if it’s been a while since the last time you’ve used your vaping device? That’s because e-liquid is seeping out of your coil’s wick, and it’s filling those little valleys between the wraps of the heating wire. When you vape, the coil heats up. The e-liquid that’s touching the coil turns to vapor and forces its way through the pools of e-liquid, and you hear a pop. Simple, right?
As it turns out, the solution isn’t too complex either. Let’s learn how to fix your popping vape.
Get a Tank With a Mesh Coil
When you take a high-gauge wire and twist it into a coil, the side of the coil has a ribbed shape. That’s what creates the valleys where e-liquid starts to collect. Now, instead of making a coil out of round wire, imagine if you could use a strip from a metal window screen as your coil’s heating surface. You could twist a window screen into a cylinder, and the cylinder’s profile would be almost flat. E-liquid would have nowhere to pool.
That is precisely how a mesh coil works. The benefits of mesh coils are dramatic. They produce huge vapor clouds and have great flavor characteristics. Since they have low mass, they operate perfectly well at relatively low wattages and work fine with single-battery vape mods. Most importantly for the topic of this article, though, a mesh coil has a flat profile. On the outside of the coil – where the coil touches the wick – there are no valleys where pools of e-liquid can form. Because of that, most mesh coils don’t pop – it simply doesn’t ever happen. When you use a mesh coil, all that you hear is the air flowing through the tank.
Mesh coils are so much better than traditional wound heating wires in every way that buying a tank with a mesh coil is simply the best investment that you can make right now to improve the quality of your vaping experience. It’ll also eliminate the popping that you experience when you vape. So, if you want to solve this problem the easy way, all that you need to do is buy a tank with a mesh coil. If you’re not ready to do that, though, read on for some additional tips.
Here Are Some of the Best Mesh Coil Tanks on the Market
Mesh coil tanks have taken the vaping world by storm over the last few years. They improve on traditional tanks in every way, producing more vapor at lower power levels and eliminating the spitting and popping that plagued the vape tanks of the past. If you don't own a mesh coil tank yet, you simply must get one. Here are a few of the best mesh coil tanks on the market today.
- SMOK T-Air: If you hate using a noisy vape tank, you definitely need to try a tank with top airflow -- and if you've been disappointed by the performance of top-airflow tanks in the past, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the new SMOK T-Air. SMOK's many fans have been asking the company to release a new top-airflow tank for years, and SMOK has finally managed to fix the lackluster vapor production that has always traditionally plagued this type of tank. Flavorful and silent, the SMOK T-Air has everything you could possibly want.
- Geekvape Zeus Z: If you want something even quieter than the SMOK T-Air and don't mind sacrificing a little vapor production, you'll probably love the Geekvape Zeus Z. Perfectly machined with a smooth twist-off top cap, the Zeus Z tank has buttery-smooth airflow that'll give you anything from a slightly restricted direct-to-lung hit to a very bold and full puff that'll leave you feeling completely satisfied if you prefer larger clouds. The Zeus Z has nearly flawless airflow characteristics and completely avoids the popping and spitting that plagued vape tanks in the past.
- Freemax Gemm Disposable: If you're tired of maintaining your vape tank, it's time to switch to the more convenient alternative -- a disposable tank! The Freemax Gemm Disposable is sold in packs of two, and it offers the performance of a full-sized vape tank in a package that's completely disposable. When you're no longer happy with the tank's flavor quality, you can simply throw the entire thing away.
Adjust Your Tank’s Airflow and Your Device’s Wattage
Many vapers have reported that, with certain tanks, using a high wattage setting when vaping and leaving the tank’s airflow collar in the fully open position both seem to encourage popping and spitback. That may be because the high volume of air flowing through the tank combined with the high wattage setting cause the accumulated pools of e-liquid to explode with extra force.
To test this solution with your vape tank, begin by closing the tank’s airflow collar slightly. Try vaping this way for a while and see if your tank stops popping. If it continues to pop, try lowering the wattage of your vaping device. If your tank continues to pop, the problem could be that the design of your tank’s coil is simply prone to popping. You can get a tank with a mesh coil as we suggested in the previous section of the article, or you can use a workaround to minimize the issue. We’ll talk about some potential workarounds next.
Remove Condensation From Your Tank’s Chimney
Sometimes, the excess e-liquid that causes a vape tank to pop isn’t trapped in the valleys between the coil and the wick. Sometimes, there’s actually a pool of e-liquid resting on top of the coil. That’s especially likely to happen if you use a tank that creates a vapor with a very large droplet size. You can’t see the droplets in the vapor, of course, but you can tell whether your tank produces a vapor with a large droplet size because it’ll sometimes feel like you’re “drinking” your e-liquid. If the vapor has a large droplet size, it’ll feel wet in your mouth. Vapor with a small droplet size feels dry.
If your tank produces vapor with a large droplet size, some of the vapor will condense in the tank’s chimney when you vape. The condensed e-liquid flows back down, forming a large drop that rests on top of the coil. When you vape, the drop explodes, and you hear a loud pop. You can prevent that from happening by twisting a piece of a paper towel and running it down your tank’s chimney periodically to remove the condensation. If you do that often, your tank will rarely pop.
Use a Thicker E-Liquid
If your tank pops because pools of e-liquid are forming between the coil and the wick, there’s also a fairly simple solution for that: You can use a thicker e-liquid. As we mentioned earlier in the article, you can tell that e-liquid is pooling between the coil and the wick because your vape tank will generally only pop if you haven’t used it in a while. When you aren’t vaping, e-liquid is seeping through the wick and collecting in the valleys of the coil. The thinner your e-liquid is, the more quickly those pools of e-liquid will form. If you switch to an e-liquid with a higher percentage of vegetable glycerin, it’ll take longer for those pools to form, and you’ll experience less popping as a result.
Use an Anti-Spitback Drip Tip
Did you know that most vape tanks work with drip tips made by other companies? Most vape tanks uses a standard mouthpiece called an “810 drip tip.” If your tank uses that design, then there are hundreds of aftermarket drip tips that you can buy and install. The specific type of drip tip that you want to search for is an anti-spitback 810 drip tip.
The most important thing to know about an anti-spitback drip is that it will not prevent your vape tank from popping. An anti-spitback drip tip isn’t designed to prevent popping; it’s designed to ensure that the popping isn’t accompanied by hot e-liquid spitting into your mouth, which is even more unpleasant. If you’ve ever had a hot spray of e-liquid shoot into your mouth when you were vaping, you know how painful that can be.
An anti-spitback drip tip will either have a mesh screen at the bottom, or it’ll have a vortex shape built into the interior of the drip tip. Either way, the purpose is the same. The screen or vortex creates a barrier that stops droplets of e-liquid while allowing vapor to pass. Your vape tank may still pop, but at least it won’t burn your mouth anymore.
Avoid Using Clapton Coils and Other Elaborate Coil Designs
As we’ve already mentioned, the best thing that you can do to prevent your vape tank from popping is to buy a new tank with a mesh coil. Let’s suppose, though, that a new tank simply isn’t in your budget right now, and the tank that you’re currently using doesn’t have a mesh coil available. Alternatively, maybe you’re using a rebuildable atomizer, and you’re not ready to use mesh coils because that would require a new atomizer with a different mounting system.
In either case, the next best option if you can’t use a mesh coil is to use a coil with the simplest heating wire design possible. Elaborate heating wires like Clapton coils for vape tanks and alien coils for rebuildable atomizers are very big, chunky wires with many valleys that encourage pools of e-liquid to form. Clapton coils, in particular, are some of the loudest vape coils on the market. Simply switching to a coil that doesn’t use twisted or braided wires can go a long way toward fixing a popping vape tank.