Interesting Math

[MrNate]

Yeah, I should be working, but bear with me on this last stupid thread and then I'll sign off.
So I was curious, being the hoarder that I am, how feasible it would be to buy and keep a lifetime supply of e-cigs and juice. Bear in mind this is more a thought exercise than one of practicality. I know nothing of long-term storage and longevity of any of these things, but here's how it breaks out:

WARNING: I do not, in any way, advocate keeping this much liquid nic on hand. This is all purely theoretical.

Let's say I vape about 2ml of 12mg/ml juice per day. That's 24mg/day. Now let's say I expect to live for another 50 years. 50x365=18,250 days. That's 438,000mg total - Less than half a kilo. That's 12,166.66ml of 36mg/ml.

That's 24.33 bottles of 500ml 36mg/ml nic juice. At FSUSA, that will run you around $2,100. That is for a lifetime supply. But wait, I'm an American. Metric numbers look funny to me - How much juice are we really talking about here? Glad you asked. It's about 25 pints, or just over 3 gallons.

Now I know a lot of you guys vape twice that amount daily (or better), but that's about where I am right now. I thought it was interesting, anyway. Feel free to check my math.

 

[AlmightyGod]

Is that one flavor?

 

[MrNate]

Assuming unflavored, as it would make more sense in this scenario to mix as-needed.

 

[Bella Chic]

Hmmm, very interesting. I don't even pay attention to how many ml's I go through in a day or a month for that matter lol.

 

[Zurd]

Quite interesting but the majority goes trough 3 or even 4ml a day, and yes what about the flavors, the PV, the battery, the charger and especially attomizer and/ cartomizers.

Personally I keep all of my cost associated with ecigs for future reference, I'm at about 1200$ a year, should go down quite a bit tho since I'm finding more and more my sweet spot as time goes on, less things to try.

 

[MrNate]

Quite interesting but the majority goes trough 3 or even 4ml a day, and yes what about the flavors, the PV, the battery, the charger and especially attomizer and/ cartomizers.

Personally I keep all of my cost associated with ecigs for future reference, I'm at about 1200$ a year, should go down quite a bit tho since I'm finding more and more my sweet spot as time goes on, less things to try.

I ran the calculations for me. It's a linear scale.

This particular calculation is what it is and claims to be nothing else. I didn't figure cartos and batts, because frankly I have no idea how long they last yet. How many times can you refill a single carto, and what is the capacity in ml? How long does a battery typically last?

If anyone can answer these questions, let me know.

 

[Automaton]

Assuming you're not one of those folks who's willing to go to the trouble to try to wash them, I find a carto will take 5-15 refills before it just starts tasting bad. I tried washing them... eh, didn't seem worth the effort. The results were so-so.

Batteries are hard to guess. The battery itself can last a year, or maybe even a bit longer. But all the electronics attached to it - the switch, etc - can break down sooner. And if they do, the battery is useless. So a proprietary battery may last a month or a year.

Very interesting, by the way. It's so much less juice and money than I thought it would be!

I ran the calculations for me. It's a linear scale.

This particular calculation is what it is and claims to be nothing else. I didn't figure cartos and batts, because frankly I have no idea how long they last yet. How many times can you refill a single carto, and what is the capacity in ml? How long does a battery typically last?

If anyone can answer these questions, let me know.

 

[MrNate]

Assuming you're not one of those folks who's willing to go to the trouble to try to wash them, I find a carto will take 5-15 refills before it just starts tasting bad. I tried washing them... eh, didn't seem worth the effort. The results were so-so.

Batteries are hard to guess. The battery itself can last a year, or maybe even a bit longer. But all the electronics attached to it - the switch, etc - can break down sooner. And if they do, the battery is useless. So a proprietary battery may last a month or a year.

Very interesting, by the way. It's so much less juice and money than I thought it would be!

It surprised me too. Maybe my math is off? Not sure.

Anyway, figure 6 months per batt, and that gives you 100 batts at $20/ea, or $2,000. That's a very "safe" estimate. In reality, it'll be less because you'll be using mods, pass-thrus, etc. most of the time. 50 batts ($1,000) is probably plenty.

How many mls do cartos hold? One?

 

[player30]

Always being prepared, I do have a two year supply of my "have to have", in case the FDA tries to get me smoking again.

 

[MrNate]

Always being prepared, I do have a two year supply of my "have to have", in case the FDA tries to get me smoking again.

That's what I'd like to do. 2-5 year's worth of stock on hand. I always find it interesting to run "lifetime supply" calcs first and scale back from there. Probably watched too many game shows as a kid. I remember always being preoccupied by the question, "Exactly how much Lemon Pledge is in a lifetime supply?"

 

[Automaton]

Depends on the carto. Standard Kr808's and 510's (Boge, Joye, SLB, CE2, etc) are 1ml. CE2 XL's and eGo Mega's are 2ml.

Juice will go bad after a couple years. So it's not practical to have more than that on hand.

 

[MrNate]

Depends on the carto. Standard Kr808's and 510's (Boge, Joye, SLB, CE2, etc) are 1ml. CE2 XL's and eGo Mega's are 2ml.

Juice will go bad after a couple years. So it's not practical to have more than that on hand.

I don't doubt it. Nor is it unreasonable to expect a thriving "tobaccoshine" black market should the stuff become criminalized, so like I said it's really just more academic interest than anything. Nicotine is certainly easier to produce than .... or whiskey.

I had read somewhere about someone storing 80% pure nicotine in glass bottles in his freezer. I wonder what the normal expected shelf life would be, and what you could expect from that method? I seem to recall him saying he expected it to be good for many years.

By the way, the cartos seem to be the critical piece. Assuming each carto could be refilled 10x, that brings you to 3650 cartos or 730 packs, costing about $6,500.

So far we have:
Cartos..........$6,500
Nic Juice.......$2,100
Batts............$2,000
Total............$10,600

So, not counting spare chargers, shipping, flavorings, or additional pg/vg, that's what a lifetime supply (50 years) of conservatively vaping an 808 would look like. Allright, I'll do the bloody math for you. That's $212 per year or... wait for it... $0.58 per day if you mix your own and never change platforms.

Here's a personal comparison: I was spending $1,488/yr, or $74,400 for a lifetime supply of cigarettes. Not counting the hospital bills, though arguably the "lifetime supply" number would probably be a lot lower in reality.

 

[VaperDan]

Mathgasm! We have similar minds MrNate. I certainly haven't had enough time to determine my average vape consumption (I've only been vaping for a couple of weeks) but I will most likely do something similar once I do. However, I have spent a good amount of time looking at prices on my computer with my TI-89 calculator finding the best shipping/cost combos and comparing it to my average analog intake. I also like to do my DIY calculations by hand.

 

[MrNate]

Yeah, I just started so it's been hard for me to get a handle on it, but it's definitely under 2ml/day and I was a 1/2 PAD smoker, so it seems like a relatively fair comparison. From what I can see, the 1 PAD smokers are vaping in the 3-4ml/day range. So it's in the neighborhood.

 

[OldDragon]

I don't worry about todays cost, This time next year there will be better cartos, some really long lasting batteries and a new juice mixer that has 3 times the flavor - I just hope all those cost a little less than todays. And the new atties will last forever and will have threads that cann't hold the burnt flavor..

 

[AttyPops]

Well, interesting post. A couple of thoughts:

You didn't include waste. At 2 ml per day, even small waste will add up a bit. Say 10%.
Flavoring $$ s/b included too. A lot of people spend mega $$$ on this. But to be conservative, I would budget at least $5.00 per month to allow for flavor changes. Unless you can get it real cheap in gallon jugs and just get, say, 3-5 flavors to last you for 50 years.

Yeah, and it's atties/cartos that are the costs. Let's try atties. 1 atty per month, allowing for failures... so 13 per year, at say, $8.00 per atty for 50 years, is $5,200 (8 x 13 x 50).

Of course, this is theoretical, as you point out. The costs will change as the technology changes.....

Cool post.

 

[MrNate]

Well, interesting post. A couple of thoughts:

You didn't include waste. At 2 ml per day, even small waste will add up a bit. Say 10%.
Flavoring $$ s/b included too. A lot of people spend mega $$$ on this. But to be conservative, I would budget at least $5.00 per month to allow for flavor changes. Unless you can get it real cheap in gallon jugs and just get, say, 3-5 flavors to last you for 50 years.

Yeah, and it's atties/cartos that are the costs. Let's try atties. 1 atty per month, allowing for failures... so 13 per year, at say, $8.00 per atty for 50 years, is $5,200 (8 x 13 x 50).

Of course, this is theoretical, as you point out. The costs will change as the technology changes.....

Cool post.

You'll notice in the last post I figured cartos (which include attys) @ $6,500. OTOH, I also found 100mg/ml juice that brings the total nic cost down to $1,400. You could swing these numbers a lot of ways. But let's say you add $5/mo for flavoring. 5*12*50=$3,000. Flavoring would actually be the second biggest expense, twice the cost of nic juice! What I'd be curious about is how much of that cost is waste, which as you indicate, acrues significantly over time.

Also, to a certain extent this is not completely theoretical. There are arguably compelling reasons to think about what may or may not be regulated in the future, and what the ramifications to us might be. To that end it might be argued that while flavoring may be the second biggest expense now, in 10 years it might be dirt cheap compared to liquid nicotine.

Here is the nicotine storage thread, BTW. I tend to believe the chemists.
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/myfreedomsmokes/43742-smoke-juice-storage-tips-4.html