Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dispenser

Need a dispenser here.

Diskeater — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:42:04 -0800

Front windshield washer fluid dispenser doesn't dispense. This feels like an easy fix....is it? At the start of the year, my girlfriend and I bought a new 2009 Nissan Versa while visiting family up in Vermont (we live in the Boston area). The car had to be delivered from another dealer so she went up a week later to get it and discovered a crack in the windshield. We took it back to the dealer to be replaced at their expense and had some friends drive it down to us last weekend. They reported that the front windshield washer dispenser doesn’t work. Awesome.

When I try to dispense the windshield washer fluid, the wipers activate and it sounds like it’s trying to dispense the liquid but nothing happenes. The rear dispenser works just fine.

I’ve tried holding the lever down for a while to get out any air packets but that did not work. I doubt the nozzles are frozen because the temperature hasn’t been below freezing for quite a few days and they used the “good” fluid that won’t freeze ever.

Since everything sounds like it should be working fine, I’m assuming that the dealer didn’t hook everything up properly when they replaced the windshield and this should be an easy fix but I’m not mechanically inclined and I don’t know enough to trace which tubes go to where.

I’m assuming that this is an easy fix if all that needs to be done is hook up a tube to a nozzle but I don’t know where to look. I would like to attempt to fix this issue before calling the dealer because if I can get it done myself, all the better.

Can anyone offer any tips? Google / Nissan forums were no help. Thanks!

What can I do about a stuck dishwasher main soap dispenser lid?

criticman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:44:43 -0800

What can I do about a stuck dishwasher main soap dispenser lid? The main soap dispenser that you fill with your dish washing detergent of preference and close the lid on is stuck closed. I can manually open it, but it fails to open during any of the various wash cycle options. I have instead just been filling it and leaving it open but I know this likely loses the soap in the pre-clean phase (which the un-enclosed dish is intended to be used for). My dishes, however, come out fairly clean.

I was wondering if anyone knows the likely cause OR if any of the pre-packaged dish washer detergent balls/cubes can just be tossed in at the start and successfully make it past the initial pre-clean phase all the way to the primary wash cycle. They all say to put them in the main dispenser and close lid (yet they all say "contain pre-wash cycle cleansers") so I am hoping someone can speak from experience.

It is a Kenmore dishwasher if that matters. If no one has any input, I will just have to call the home warranty company and shell out $65 for them to come fix it (not so worried about the money but arranging to be home from work is an issue).

Can non-foamy liquid hand soap work in a foaming dispenser?

schmoppa — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:33:57 -0800

Is it possible to use regular liquid hand soap with one of those foaming soap dispensers? I really like foaming dispensers because the soap pumps out pre-lathered for you, but it would be nice to be able to use any liquid hand soap you want. I've never tried replacing the less viscous foaming soap with thicker regular hand soap, but I assume that there is a reason why the foaming stuff is more fluid.

Would adding water serve to make regular liquid hand soap more fluid (and therefore work well with a foaming dispenser), or is that just going to make the soap foam up in the bottle?

Better Dispenser For Cottonelle Wipes

forallmankind — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:39:57 -0800

I like me some Cottonelle Fresh® Flushable Moist Wipes, but the dispenser pop-up tub is terrible - the next wipe more often than not falls back inside. Can anyone recommend an alternative? Or maybe my technique is wrong?

Learn the Toilet Paper Dispenser Tricks of the Professionals for just $19.99!

WCityMike — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:37:23 -0800

You walk into a public toilet stall. There is a metal toilet paper roll holder. One of two annoying situations is happening. Either the bottom toilet roll is used up and the top toilet roll is still in its storage area.

Or the top roll is down and the bottom "roll" (even if it's just the cardboard tube) has not been removed, and the drag the bottom roll puts on the top roll causes the paper to break after one or two squares comes out.

It's a small annoyance, but a small annoyance I've had with these things for most of my life. Somewhere in the great Mefi User Database, there must be someone who just happened to somewhere along the line figure out the way to make these public metal toilet paper dispensers sing.

(Well, not literally.)

Any takers?

Bonus question: anyone develop a surefire way of preserving one's privacy when in a toilet stall where the door closes but won't lock?

Go ahead and fire all snark cannons for asking the question — but fess up, the answers'd be handy to you, too.

Paper Dispenser For Oddly-Sized Paper?

DMan — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:28:26 -0800

Looking for a special dispenser for oddly-sized pieces of paper, any ideas? Hey guys, asking this on behalf of my mom, who is a bank teller.

One of the things they have to do for every transaction is print 3 different types of receipts. This involves picking up one of the papers from a stack, and putting it in a special printer that actually prints the receipt. They have to do this 3 times; once for each thing they have to print.

Not only is this time-consuming, but the papers apparently stick together, making it difficult to grab just one. While the best solution would be for the bank to purchase printers with built-in feed trays, this doesn't seem to be a possiblity, at least in the near future. So we want to solve the problem from the other end, and make the papers easier to dispense.

I thought that there must be something on the market that can dispense oddly shaped pieces of paper, one at a time. It needs to be something that's easily loaded with paper, and it needs to release the blank receipts quickly and only one at a time. The paper is not a roll, but is instead individual slips of paper.

Any ideas here? Something must exist. Failing that, how would I go about making such a device? Thanks in advance.