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.
Tempered glass shower door shattered.
Safety glazings are commonly required for sliding glass doors shower doors and patio furniture.
A glass shower door can break even if no one s in the bathroom.
Tempered glass safety alert tempered glass is a technology that is designed to fail safely.
That s because the tempering process used to create safety glass causes it to break into very small pieces rather than large sharp shards.
Ironically the center tension zone engineered into tempered glass through the quenching process is also what makes it so vulnerable to catastrophic breakage.
It s called a spontaneous blow and it can happen because the glass is tempered.
The glass is designed with safety in mind.
The tempered glass connection it s important to note that actual injuries from exploding shower door glass are very rare.
That inclusion a tiny ball of metal made of nickel and sulfer growing over time.
Most contractors agree that the problem lies in the tempered glass that is used in shower doors.
But while this is the greatest strength of tempered glass it is also a weakness.
Consumer products that use tempered glass should rupture into small fragmented pieces and not into larger shards if.
That happened to a nine year old.
And it s called an inclusion.
Delta shower doors are made with tempered glass much like the glass used in automobiles and airplanes.
It takes a serious impact to break and when it does it shatters into small granular chunks instead of large shards.
Was having his morning coffee when his wife alerted him to a strange noise.
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.
The reason tempered glass spontaneously shatters it might have a flaw in the edge or a scratch in the surface.
Meaning if you were to drop the glass on its side it would instantly shatter.
Yet there s a rare and terrifying problem.
6 2012 larry kucharik 64 of oak park ill.
Tempered shower glass most glass shower doors are put through a process called tempering where its tensile strength is altered during a heating process.
This makes the glass much stronger against direct impact but weakens it against side impact.