This tip comes from Allen who originally posted it to the RVbasics Yahoo group:
I have a spray bottle in which I keep chlorinated water (bleach and water mixture) to use as a disinfectant on water hose connections, faucets, etc. prior to hooking up my water supply (you never can tell when the some ya-hoo used a dirty gray water hose on the faucet to wash out a sewer hose, and splashed around some).

The design of this bottle is quite common: There is a lever you squeeze with a couple of fingers, and an extension on that lever will push up a piston against a spring, pumping a spray of fluid out of the nozzle. When you release the trigger lever, the piston is supposed to follow, under spring pressure.

The problem is that after a while the piston gets stuck at the top, and the spring is insufficiently strong to push it back down. Typically, it will come down after a while, or with some mechanical agitation (hitting it), but eventually is sticks so often and for so long, I throw away the bottle, and get a new one.

The solution I only recently figured out is to take some silicon lubrication spray and spray it up in the bore in which the piston reciprocates. It will penetrate up alongside the piston, and the piston will slide down. Furthermore, a few squeezes more, and the piston moves down under spring pressure reliably and quickly.

Group member Jan added: Great idea about the bleach/ water combo! Actually, a 1:10 ratio is the preferred “germ” killing amount. One part bleach and nine parts water mixed; can be kept in a plastic squeeze bottle without problems ready to use.
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