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. What would happen if I just replaced the glass with two thicknesses of regular window glass?
Has anyone else had this sort of problem, and what did they do?
TIA,
Bob Hofmann