Safety Sliding Glass Door Shattered

The glass is designed with safety in mind.

Safety sliding glass door shattered.

However patio glass doors are not invincible and can shatter in high winds or if they are struck with a hard object. A rock launched by a lawnmower just shattered the glass on our andersen brand sliding patio door. 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. Safety glazing generally refers to any type of glass that is engineered to reduce the potential for serious injury.

Since tempered glass is twice as strong as ordinary glass patio doors are not broken as easily as they once were. One rather common cause of tempered spontaneous breakage is known as a nickel sulfide inclusion. 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.

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. Spontaneous breakage is a relatively well known in the glass industry but somewhat rare phenomenon associated with tempered safety glass. I think we have the details for the contractor that installed the doors 15 years ago and will give them a call to discuss repairs.