On Sun, 7 Dec 2008 09:23:58 -0800 (PST), "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.
When I looked up, one of the four door glass panes had shattered into
small shards. It was obviously tempered glass by the way it broke
up.

I took the shards out of the frame today, and the frame is not warped
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, I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.


No way to do that. We had screens like that when I was a kid, and I
remember several of them breaking, one on a day with no fire in the
fire place. If you want to fix this right, get a fireplace insert
with a screen to watch the fire through and real doors with no glass
in them that you can close. You'll get more heat from less wood.