The Highs and Lows of Volt, Ohms and Watts

The Highs and Lows of Volt, Ohms and Watts

When I first transitioned from cigs to electronic cigarettes. I have to admit that I spent a great deal of time thoroughly confused. Though some might argue the point, I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, and I expected to be hit with some unfamiliar lingo, but what I didn't expect was to need an engineering degree to understand e-cigs!!!

In the first shop I visited, a rather highbrow establishment, the assistant literally looked down his nose at me as he prattled on about ohms and variable voltage as if he were describing tea and biccies and I should know exactly what he was talking about!

Needless to say, I left there without making a purchase and questioning the wisdom of my decision to quit smoking and start vaping. 

To be completely honest, he had me in such a tither that, as soon as I'd left the shop I was looking for a place to sit and smoke.

Since that day, I've spent a lot of time reading and learning, but that is probably down to my personality type more than anything else, and to be honest with you, you don't really have to understand all of this jargon to enjoy vaping. 

But, in case you go to the same Vape shop I did that first time, and the same assistant serves you, it'd be good to have a basic knowledge to work from, right?

Don't be afraid, you don't have to be a boffin to understand what's being talked about.

We think our explanation which makes use of simple analogy will help to make the electrical side of electronic cigarettes easy to understand.

Think of the circuits in your ecig as a garden hose. 

Water flows through it under pressure at a certain rate.

Electricity works the same way, only instead of water, it's energy.

See if these explanations make sense, if we pretend that we're kids playing in the dirt and making mud (vapour) in the garden.

Voltage: Think of voltage as the amount of water that's flowing through your hose and, just like more water will give you more mud; more voltage will give you more vapour.

Ohms: Ohms would be the pressure that our flow of water is under. The coils in our atomiser act like if we gripped our hose and pinched it with our fingers. It restricts the flow of electricity, so the higher the ohms (the more fingers we pinch with)  the less flow we have, therefore we have the less mud (or vapour).

Wattage:  Wattage is a little harder to understand in a technical sense, but for practicality let's still try to keep it simple. Think of the wattage as the amount of pressure you would have to apply or how far you need to turn on your tap to keep the same amount of water coming out even if you pinch your hose. 

Pinch your hose tighter and you have to turn on the tap even more to keep the same amount of water flowing through to get the same amount of mud. Now apply that principle to what you already know about making mud.

What it all comes down to is that for maximum vapour you'll want low ohms combined with high voltage.

There are issues with this though.

Imagine that your hose is hooked to a tank (battery) instead of the mains water supply. There's a limited supply and as the supply drops lower, the force drops too.

The further on you turn the fap to make a higher flow and coupled with a lower restriction (less fingers gripping to restrict the water flow) is going to result in the tank being emptied much faster.

And as you do do this, (more water, faster flow) you're going to go through more e-liquid too (in our analogy eliquid is the dirt we use to make our vaping mud pies and when Al, the water and dirt is gone, we can no longer play). 

But that's not all. 

You're also going to burn out your atomiser faster too because it is being burned hotter and it's less restricted.

So it's a trade off. One you have to decide the value of for yourself.

For even more tips, tricks and the latest happenings in the e-cig world, make sure to like the Exhale Cigarettes fan page on Facebook.

26th Feb 2015 Vape Maestro

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