Safety Sliding Glass Door Shattered

Spontaneous breakage is a relatively well known in the glass industry but somewhat rare phenomenon associated with tempered safety glass.

Safety sliding glass door shattered.

A rock launched by a lawnmower just shattered the glass on our andersen brand sliding patio door. Since tempered glass is twice as strong as ordinary glass patio doors are not broken as easily as they once were. The glass is designed with safety in mind. Safety glazings are commonly required for sliding glass doors shower doors and patio furniture.

It takes a serious impact to break and when it does it shatters into small granular chunks instead of large shards. However patio glass doors are not invincible and can shatter in high winds or if they are struck with a hard object. Safety glazing generally refers to any type of glass that is engineered to reduce the potential for serious injury. By design tempered glass completely shatters into thousands of small pieces when stressed beyond its capacity and serves as a safety feature which helps avoid more serious injuries from the larger sharper shards often seen in the non tempered glass.

Recently manufacturers of patio and sliding glass doors started using tempered glass in their products. Although tempered glass in general is stronger than non tempered glass especially when it comes to direct impacts to the face of the glass it can still break. Delta shower doors are made with tempered glass much like the glass used in automobiles and airplanes.