DIYbanter - View Single Post

Jim Elbrecht

"hr(bob) " wrote:

I have a 15 year-old glass SEARS fireplace door, made up of four door
sections, each section is about 8" wide by 20" high, with a metal
frame around each door. Two doors on each side with a piano type
hinge between the pair of doors, and two pin type hinges at the
outside points. Last night, while reading on the sofa in the family
room, with the fire slowly getting lower as I was letting it burn down
for the night, I heard what sounded like a cap gun type of noise.

Cap gun is weird- I've heard tempered glass go a couple times and it
was more like a shotgun. Most recent was a glass door on an
entertainment center. Nobody had touched it in several hours- and
no one was closer than 3 feet to it when it blew. Pretty dramatic
after you're sure nobody has glass in their eye.

-snip-
and shows no signs of anything that could have triggered the
breakage. The glass is about 7/16" thick. The fire was burning very
low, and there were no sparks or anything that I am aware of that
triggered the breakage. Before I shell out big $$$ bucks for a new
pane of tempered glass,

Glass is cool stuff. It might have gotten dinged years ago and just
sat there waiting for the right moment.

I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
What would happen if I just replaced the glass with two thicknesses of
regular window glass?

Wouldn't survive the first fire.

Has anyone else had this sort of problem, and what did they do?

Go to a glass/fireplace shop and buy the right glass.

Jim