I have a 15 year-old glass SEARS fireplace door, made up of four doorsections, each section is about 8" wide by 20" high, with a metalframe around each door. Two doors on each side with a piano typehinge between the pair of doors, and two pin type hinges at theoutside points. Last night, while reading on the sofa in the familyroom, with the fire slowly getting lower as I was letting it burn downfor 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 intosmall shards. It was obviously tempered glass by the way it brokeup.I took the shards out of the frame today, and the frame is not warpedand shows no signs of anything that could have triggered thebreakage. The glass is about 7/16" thick. The fire was burning verylow, and there were no sparks or anything that I am aware of thattriggered the breakage. Before I shell out big $$$ bucks for a newpane 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 ofregular window glass?Has anyone else had this sort of problem, and what did they do?TIA,Bob Hofmann

Seems a cool draft might be enough to shatter the glass if it was hot ... just unevencool down? We purchased tempered glass for our kitchen, which was very reasonable.Regular window glass would be dangerous, it seems.I made the mistake recently of placing an empty pyrex pie plate on our glass cooktop,thinking the burner was off. We sat down to dinner in the dining room and a minutelater heard glass break in the kitchen. The pie plate had just exploded, all over thekitchen, with long, sharp shards clear across the room. It would have been badnews, had anyone been standing nearby.

Why did my fireplace door glass shatter

Dec 07, 2008 24 Replies

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RickH 17 years ago

Check the inside edge of the frame for a screw or burr that may have stressed it on the small edge.

Tempered glass is more sensitive to strikes/stress from the edge than face on.

I replaced a pane in a commercial window one time, the screws that held the frame together were so close to the glass that the second the screw thread touched the edge as I put it back together, it shattered. I probably could have thrown a baseball at this glass head- on and not broken it, but the smallest concentrated inward pressure at the edge will shatter the whole pane.

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James Sweet 17 years ago

I've seen it happen with pinball machine playfield glasses. They can take a heck of a smack of the steel ball hitting them from the inside, people smacking their beer down on the outside, etc, but lean one standing on edge against the wall and a grain of sand on the floor can cause it to shatter into tiny shards.

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Norminn 17 years ago

The windshield on my older car broke twice from a very small point of rust on the frame. This occurred, beginning with a crack that slowly extended, twice within a year. On the second repair, the installer found the cause and corrected it.

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Oren 17 years ago

The grain of sand comment it true; based on lessons taught to me. Any little nick on the edge of tempered glass may cause the glass to shatter.

A good reason why glass companies use rubber pads during transport to a job.

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hrhofmann 17 years ago

Got the glass and put it in, making sure there was nothing touching the edges, just on the flat surfaces.

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