I want to get rid of the unsightly grey shutters from the front of our shop. (Though i'd probably keep one over the door)
We are on a busy high street with flats over the shops so i'm not so bothered from a burglary point of view but sadly the town has a high proportion of mindless knobheads.
I'm thinking that toughened glass won't be brilliant security wise, is laminated glass a lot tougher?
Any opinions on either appreciated.
And with regard to 6.4mm laminated glass, is there a real advantage to double glazing from a heat loss perspective? And what's it like for condensation?
Ta, Rick
Toughened will shatter into granules when broken giving easy access to anything inside. Laminated will initially shatter but be held together by the plastic layed between the sheets of glass. A determind attack will still get through. The thickness required will depend on the size of the window - for a shop window I would suspect that 6.4 will be too thin. If you quote a size to a glazier they should be able to give you an estimate of thickness and cost
Malcolm
It's a wooden frame with 1400 x 600mm panes.
Annealed and heat strengthened glass is about twice as strong as plain annealed glass. It will tend to stay in large pieces when broken, but they can usually be pushed out of the frame with further force.
Tempered glass is about four times as strong as plain glass, but will break up into tiny pieces and fall out of the frame when broken.
Because the plastic core spreads loads to some extent, laminated glass is around half as strong to twice as strong again as plain glass, depending upon aspect ratio, but it is very difficult to force out of the frame, even when broken. Of course, 20mm laminated glass will be a lot stronger than 6.4mm glass.
Any of them can be specified for double glazing, so you could have tempered glass on the outside, for maximum strength, and laminated glass on the inside, for best security.
I would replace the shutters with an attractive design of retractable grille.
Colin Bignell
Yep. Check out your commercial insurance requirements before you rip them out. May give a hefty premium rise or they might refuse to insure altogether.
Very good point. I'll look at that first.
Why not keep the shutters and get some 'public' art painted on them?
Maybe a recreation of what is in the shop, or green fields and a blue sky, or a still life.
Lam is much weaker than toughened.
NT
The thing is, the local Asian chappie told me once he prefers shutters cos at night they can spray them with paint and it is just rolled up and hidden in the day time.
Brian
My shed has a toughened and laminated window.. it was a security upgrade option when I bought it.
There's a chemists shop on Rose Hill, Sutton/Mitcham (S London to you foreigners) or thereabouts that had a mural painted on their shutters (pre- graffitied if you will). In the years that I passed by, none of the chavs touched it.
I thought about that but wouldn't know where to start asking.
Steel rollers and paint them for when you're closed. Steel bends when hit really hard, rather than shattering. You can't afford laminated.
A signwriter would be able to take a photo of the shop window - or anything else - and print it onto strips of sticky vinyl.
Or phone the local council and ask about community art or street art projects
Owain
Art college? Graffiti artists that can do more than tagging?
Maybe if there are others shops, get the whole street involved and approach a local newspaper?
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