This makes the glass much stronger against direct impact but weakens it against side impact.
Tempered glass shower door shattered.
Most contractors agree that the problem lies in the tempered glass that is used in shower doors.
Yet there s a rare and terrifying problem.
It takes a serious impact to break and when it does it shatters into small granular chunks instead of large shards.
Consumer products that use tempered glass should rupture into small fragmented pieces and not into larger shards if.
Ironically the center tension zone engineered into tempered glass through the quenching process is also what makes it so vulnerable to catastrophic breakage.
They went upstairs to investigate and in their empty bathroom they found their glass shower door inexplicably shattered and lying in perilous shards all over the bathroom.
Shower doors spontaneously shattering sometimes while a person is showering resulting in wet naked injured people.
That happened to a nine year old.
Tempered shower glass most glass shower doors are put through a process called tempering where its tensile strength is altered during a heating process.
The glass is designed with safety in mind.
And it s called an inclusion.
6 2012 larry kucharik 64 of oak park ill.
Retailers of shower doors usually cite improper installation as the primary cause of shower door explosion but installation contractors point out that the frames brackets and hinges are usually still in place after a shower door explosion occurs.
Meaning if you were to drop the glass on its side it would instantly shatter.
Was having his morning coffee when his wife alerted him to a strange noise.
During the heating process the glass becomes more resistant to a direct impact but much more susceptible to a side impact.
The other reason is occasionally there s an impurity in the glass when it was melted from sand.
Safety glazings are commonly required for sliding glass doors shower doors and patio furniture.
The tempered glass connection it s important to note that actual injuries from exploding shower door glass are very rare.
It s called a spontaneous blow and it can happen because the glass is tempered.
The reason tempered glass spontaneously shatters it might have a flaw in the edge or a scratch in the surface.
Delta shower doors are made with tempered glass much like the glass used in automobiles and airplanes.
Tempered glass safety alert tempered glass is a technology that is designed to fail safely.
But while this is the greatest strength of tempered glass it is also a weakness.