There’s nothing better than enjoying top-tier cannabis delivered straight to your door. But although the cannabis strain can affect your overall experience, so can the temperature of your smoke, and its toxicity.
What if there was a way you could get rid of some smoke toxins and cool down your smoke before it enters your lungs? We’d recommend checking out bong percolators. These inventive attachments are installed right in your bong or smoking rig – they defuse the smoke before it enters your lungs, causing it to cool down and removing several types of toxins.
Let’s break down the different types of bong percolators you can find on the market. Some of these are separate pieces, while others may come with a commercial bong you purchase in a set.
What is a Bong Percolator?
A bong percolator, in short, is a cannabis accessory you can add to your bong in order to cool down cannabis smoke before it reaches your lungs. Some more advanced or commercial bongs will also come with their own percolators integrated into their designs.
How Do Percolators Work?
How do they work? Basically, smoke goes through the bong and the water inside. When the smoke emerges, it first goes through a percolator, which gives the smoke time to cool down before you inhale. As a result, your cannabis smoking experience is a little healthier and arguably more enjoyable compared to using a regular bong.
Percolators provide more benefits than just temperature regulation. They can:
- Remove some harmful toxins depending on the style of percolator
- Result in a more enjoyable experience for beginners, especially if their lungs aren’t used to the sensation of smoking cannabis
- Prevent your lungs from accruing damage over the long-term
In short, there’s no reason not to use a bong percolator if you can find one you like or if you can find a bong with one already integrated into its design.
Types of Bong Percolators
Bong percolators come in a variety of styles. Technically, there are many more than the 10 described below. But we decided to keep the styles of percolator down to a manageable collection. Most other percolators are derivatives of these major variations.
Diffused Downstream
A diffused downstream percolator is the most basic and common of all the types. That’s partly because it can be found as a fixed part of a bong’s construction or it can be a removable attachment for user convenience.
They’re pretty easy to tell apart from the others – they just look like regular vertical pipes that extend from your bowl’s piece joint fixture. A few slits at the base allow smoke to come through and cool down before entering your lungs.
These are some of the best bong percolators for use between multiple bong types (so long as each bong you want to use it with can accept the percolator in question, that is).
Inline
Inline percolators are characterized as horizontal tubes that feature several slits. Percolators that feature more slits create more diffusion and more cooling over time. Thus, longer inline percolators could be a good choice if you want to significantly alter your smoking experience and make your cannabis smoke even more accessible and enjoyable.
However, these bong percolators do make your overall bong apparatus a little larger than usual. So they can be difficult to store.
Circ
Circ percolators are, as their name suggests, circular! They look vaguely similar to a rounded hockey puck and feature slits on the outside of their shape. These percolators are normally attached to your bowl’s joint near the bottom of a down stem, although some variation exists depending on whether the percolator is included with the bong by default.
Showerhead
As you can see, bong percolators are usually named according to their shape! Showerhead percolators are, therefore, roughly analogous to a showerhead. They feature a tube connected to your main bong chamber that can pull the smoke up through a larger tube, then push the smoke through a round base with slits to maximize the diffusion process.
These are some of the most complex percolators, but arguably some of the most effective overall. Just be aware that they tend to be fragile compared to simpler percolators on the market.
Honeycomb
A honeycomb percolator looks like a disk or waffle that features lots of holes in the middle (obviously creating the honeycomb shape). These percolators are usually flat and are often sold in pairs since they work as multiple diffusion chambers to be stacked inside your bong’s tube.
They’re meant to be installed parallel to the base of your bong, which results in bubbles shooting up straight through your chambers. As you add more percolator layers, you get a greater cooling effect and more smoke filtration. This, in turn, results in an even more enjoyable smoking experience.
Tree
A tree percolator looks complex and features multiple arms that feature slits. The arms connect at the top of the percolator’s apparatus. Air is filtered from the bottom and forced through a central percolator tube, then down the arms. This creates lots of bubbles and an extensive cooling effect.
You can usually find tree percolators preinstalled in commercial bongs. But keep in mind that, since there are multiple arms included with every percolator type, these are among the most delicate you can find. It’s only recommended to use these with durable bongs.
Matrix
A matrix percolator is stylish and effective, characterized by a cylindrical shape. You install these at the center of your bong’s base. Since these percolators come with both horizontal and vertical slits, you get a ton of diffusion and lots of cooling since the smoke separates and comes back together in multiple different directions.
Swiss
Swiss percolators are among the rarest of all types, and they’re a bit chaotic looking. But these are also some of the most effective percolators on the market. They feature holes in a somewhat random design throughout the percolator’s apparatus. Smoke filters through the holes and doesn’t create any drag thanks to the semi-random nature of the holes’ positioning.
Don’t be afraid – these percolators work just as well as all the others! They are a bit fragile, though.
Donut
Donut percolators are pretty different from Swiss percolators in that they only have a single hole as opposed to multiple chaotic ones. The one hole does a great job, however, in pushing smoke and water through and around it, creating both a splash guard and providing fantastic diffusion and cooling effects. These are some of the simplest leaders to use and understand.
Turbine
Lastly, turbine percolators are often paired with honeycomb percolators since they also use flat disks. They feature angled slits that sit around the main chamber of your bong. This results in a whirlpool of bubbles and water as the water is pulled from different chambers. The smoke cools and looks particularly interesting as it’s extracted and eventually enters your lungs.
Summary
In the end, the different types of percolators all work to the same effect: to make smoke cooler and make your smoking experience more enjoyable. Because of this, we’d easily recommend getting at least one type of bong percolator for regular use, although some people also enjoy experimenting with different percolators to see which one they prefer overall.
In our opinion, nothing is better than combining a great bong percolator with quality cannabis delivered straight to your door. Contact us about high-quality cannabis delivery to your LA home today and you can enjoy a phenomenal smoking experience ASAP.
