About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.

Would this be a good opportunity to replace the door as the wooden frame
is rotting at the bottom.

Is it likely the other panes will go in the same way if not is it
relatively cheap to replace a 190x80cm pane in a sliding unit.

In article ,
Nick wrote:
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.

If it's toughened glass this just sometimes happens - same as it does with
toughened glass once used on cars.

Insurance should cover it.

--
*Why is the word abbreviation so long?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Jul 6, 12:45*pm, Nick wrote:
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.


Was it the fixed door or the moving one? It might be subsidence and
the fixed door coming under slowly increasing stress and the
eventually shattering. if it's the moving door then it can't be that
becuase it would get stiff first.

i've seen this happe nat work and it is very alarmning - a big bang
and then a pile of granules of glass. Sometimes they stay intact but
turn to a mosaic of small fragments.

Robert

On Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:45:18 +0100 Nick wrote :
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.

Known phenomenon with toughened glass. Check out

http://www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/330/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

--
Tony Bryer, 'Software to build on' from Greentram
www.superbeam.co.uk www.superbeam.com www.greentram.com

Tony Bryer wrote:
On Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:45:18 +0100 Nick wrote :
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.

Known phenomenon with toughened glass. Check out

http://www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/330/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage


Yes that looks about right. Although I guess the window is the same age
as the house ~20 years, a bit older than expected for this type of fault.

In message
,
RobertL writes
i've seen this happe nat work and it is very alarmning - a big bang
and then a pile of granules of glass.
I've also seen this happen but to some poor guy who was entering a bank,
he was left with a pile of granules around his ankles and holding a
rather heavy brushed stainless steel door handle... Would have been
cruel of me to laugh at his obvious shock and bemusement, so I did.
Sometimes they stay intact but
turn to a mosaic of small fragments.

Robert


--
Clint Sharp

Nick wrote:
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.


I saw that happen to a car window once. The door had been left open and
no-one was near it and nothing was touching it. The window just shattered all
of a sudden.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember chunkyoldcortina
saying something like:

Nick wrote:
About 20 minutes ago the inside pane glass of my patio door glass
spontaneously shattered with a huge bang. It is still gently crackling.
The door is 20 Years old. It is aluminium sliding and still opens ok, so
it cant have been stress from the frame.

Any ideas what happened.


I saw that happen to a car window once. The door had been left open and
no-one was near it and nothing was touching it. The window just shattered all
of a sudden.

When I was a lad I saw that happen to a parked dustcart windscreen.
Nobody was near it and the crew were amazed at it shattering all of a
sudden. 'Course it might have had something to do with my mate's
unerring catapult aim.