http://www.bobvila.com/BBS/Doors_and_Windows/2398/2398/flat-page1.html
I find this so intriging, I wonder if any of you have heard of it…I never have.
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where …
Excellence is its own reward!
A new code-compliant, spill-safe outlet from Legrand offers a sleek solution for a kitchen island plug.
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Dig into cutting-edge approaches and decades of proven solutions with total access to our experts and tradespeople.
Start Free Trial NowGet instant access to the latest developments in green building, research, and reports from the field.
Start Free Trial Now
Replies
New one on me. Have seen corners crack from TCE differences when improperly installed. Ony way I could see a "explosion" would be of a tempered patio door or such -
Some guesses?
Other thought is that whoever installed them put lots of nails in the flanges all the way around, and final stages of wood contraction (9 years is a stretch for this theory) compressed the glass in the frame.
Saw one case where a 150 YO church suddenly developed cracks in the plaster - traced to water leak from AC pan in the 'attic' dripping onto a beam and expanding it. It is conceivably possible that the homeowner has a roof leak that is expanding parts of his framing coupled with improper installation of the frames.
Never seen it happen and can't think of a reason why it would unless the perimeter of the glass panel is getting tweaked somehow. Tempered glass will 'explode' if the edges (especially the corners) are subjected to pressure or are dinged against a nail, etc., but never heard of it happening with standard insulated units.
Hmm, inner pane is often "plain" glass, but that should not matter. But wait, if the outer glass is laminated (for whatever reason), I wonder if it, the outer glass, put pressure on the inner pane by way of the sealing frame?
I can't think of a way to get the argon filler between the panes to expand enough to pop either pane out. Doesn't mean it can't happen, only that my imagination doesn't go far enough.
Nope, never heard of it doing it by itself. I have exploded lots of glass blocks when demoing them, and have exploded thermopanes the same way, and exploded television sets (actually more like imploded) when chucking pool balls through them, plus the simple flourescent lightbulb explosion when dumpstering. But not like this is described.
I've seen one crack, but never saw one explode...I was bidding an addition on a "green wood" house (a UVA professor had gained a following around Charlottesville in the mid 70s). While the client and I were sitting in the living room, a bulldozer was grading the next lot...The thermo-pane glass had been set in a green oak frame, and, apparently on a nail head...the shrinkage, nail, and rumbling added up...but I think this one went at 1:30, so there goes my even hour theory<G> Don't worry, we can fix that later!
There have been problems of bulging windows when installed in higher elevations. They have had to had an expandsion chamber for ones going to those areas.That combined with some kind of triggering even such as those mentioned might cause an "explosion".But much glass is temper, by code, and when those let go I could see many people call it an explosion.But I question the whole deal based on what the person was saying.They claim the warantee covers cracking and how could you have an "explosion" of a glass plane with it being cracked.So my first comment is that there is a failure to explain what has really happened.
I have specialized in repairing windows for more years then I care to admit. I have never seen insulated glass installed for 9 years suddenly self destruct .... 3 times, and it be the fault of the manufacturer. My gut feeling is something else is at work here. I have seen some very bizzare and freak things but they all have a cause, it's just a mater of finding it. The problem is 99 out of a 100 in this business won't research it without getting paid. That's why I'm poor and know so much.
Happened to me just a month ago......My son was in his room on the computor. DW and I the kitchen. POP!!!! Iyell down the hall to the boy..What the Hell was that....He had that I didn't do it look on his face.
Went in and saw the glass blown in..I went out the back door looking for...well I don't know what, but the glass came in, so something must have hit it. Nope, outside pane was fine. just inside pain of lower sash.
How do I fix That??
Ward
Do YOU know the brand name of yours?
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Piffin, I sure don't. came with the house. It's a 1957 ranch, but I don;t think they are original. They are wood frame, double hung. The one that broke was on the east side. Normal day. Half sun 10-15 deg.
I was just looking at it yesterday. Just scratching my head.....
About a million years ago didn't Andersen have trouble with this? They were putting some kind of gas between the panes and when installed at higher elevations they imploded, rather than exploded.
Funny how the HO says it breaks inward. Reminded me.
ShelleyinNM
vacuum and resonation...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
New one to me, too.
The first thing that comes to my mind is some kind of racking causing the glass to break.
The second is a flaw in the glass that has just manifested itself at this time due to heat/cold/etc. A small sliver of cut glass... over time, rubbing against the pane is an example of what I am thinking... but on multiple windows? Doubtful.
Next would be some type of funky, new-fangled (at the time) inert gas that has just kept building pressure over time. I haven't read about any such thing... but I guess weirder things have happened.
Next... poltergeists? LOL Or perhaps a kid that hasn't learned that throwing the ball in the house is NOT a good idea? Suicide birds hitting windows... not breaking the outer glass, but creating enough of an impact to compress the sealed air... causing the explosion?
OHHHH, just had a brain cramp. What about an abrasive cleaner of some type that is causing the failure? "Mamma lisa's secret glass cleaning potion"? I have seen the effects of starch and toilet paper... not too far out to imagine a concoction that could weaken the glass.
Just swingin' at the left-field seats now...
Yeah, The only hint that sticks in my mind is the manufacturer's turning them away. Either the maker is a poor company that never really stands behind it's work, or there is some reason thatt he rep suspects internal causes, like junior playing golf while mama is away, or your home brewed chemical factory theory...
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
"I'm just a tradesman like Bob Villa plays on TV"
ROFL!!!!
;)Guys named Bob have a sense of humour, don't they?
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
It was a cool moonless dark winters night.....when suddenly glass began to break for no reason around the world..... Many where astounded and many went bankrupt as profits were shattered.....
Sounds like a book to me.
Think my bank will believe me when I tell them I have a pen that writes checks by itself?
"... like junior playing golf while mama is away..."
That's the first thing that came to my mind. Like maybe the neighbor kid got a new pellet gun or something.
BTW - You know, you and Bob Villa do sorta resemble each other...
The very premise of gun control is to, by law, demand that good becomes defenseless. And when good is defenseless, evil wins. I will not let that happen. [Ted Nugent]
I resemble that remark!
LOLI've been reading a lot about identity theft lately
you suppose he might try to take over my persona?
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
"I've been reading a lot about identity theft lately
you suppose he might try to take over my persona?"
Actually, I'd tend to think it was the other way around.
(-:
For Clinton, the question of whether a gun is good or evil depends simply on whether a government employee's finger is on the trigger. [James Bovard]
While you are brokering this deal, tell him i'd like to keep my personality and his bank account. Think he'll go for it?
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
Don't you remember when it was happening in Boston? Was it about 20 years ago?
Glass spandrel panels in the curtainwall exterior of a large downtown high rise, were shattering at random, raining glass pebbles down onto the sidewalks way down below.
It got discussed in a number of articles in the Engineering News Record, the regular rag of the commercial and industrial construction market. I was in the curtainwall biz at the time, and buying big glass orders. The tech gurus at PPG, LOF, and elsewhere, attributed it to some sort of "kernel" structure in the glass, made unstable when tempering.
I spent some time in a biz that did its own glass tempering, and it is common when tempering glass to experience a certain percentage of "falldown" loss, which is simply exploding sheets, somewhere in the oven conveyor. Kind of a mess to clean up.
Therma-Tru Doors, shipping hundreds of thousands of patio door and door lite products, all made with tempered glass, sees regular occurrences of sudden and random glass failures. It is not the result of unhappy little "kernels," but instead is caused by a small nick somewhere along an edge somewhere. The tempering process puts in tension, the thin top layer of glass on both surfaces and all edges of a sheet. A "cut" along an edge can stress the unit, and it can lay dormant until some little thing, like even a small temperature change, causes sudden failure.
It is not really an explosion, just a sudden total fracture, and tempered glass breaks into pebble-like "collets." A pop, and you are left with a pile of glass gravel on the floor.
Edited 3/4/2005 8:00 pm ET by Gene Davis
Twenty years ago, I was out in Colorado, and glass was not my highest priority.Thanks for constructive - or should i say destructive - information
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
You all may think I'm making this up, but it's fairly easy, but time consuming, for a trained person to find the cause of the failure. A fractologist can examine the broken fragments, and if the fragment where the break started is in the pile, the precise cause can be determined. It's amazing that someone can bring a box of broken glass to a fractologist and the fractologist can find the break source and cause.
Some years ago I had a job that included testing glass strength. Occasionally we'd have a failure and we'd send the pieces off to some doctor in a lab and we'd get a report back with all the details of the cause.
I took a 3 day course in it years ago, but we, pardon the pun, barely scratched the surface. The real experts have Ph.D.'s in it. But, I understand the very basics of it. In fact, an untrained person can often look at the pattern of the broken glass and trace back the lines to a single point from which they came and narrow down the area.
All the major glass manufacturers would have experts on staff. Maybe a letter to the one who made your glass, detailing your concern and that it happened three times, may spark their interest. If it happens again, and you wish, try to save all the pieces, scotch taping any sections that have cracked but not crumbled and laying them aside. Say to the manufacturer that you saved the pieces.
It's too bad, though, that you probably won't get any new windows out of it.
Are you serious? You can send a pieces of glass that exploded to a lab and they will tell you exactly why it exploded?
I would have never thought that spontanious glass explosion was such a science. Do you think they could examine unexploded glass and tell me which pieces will explode in the future and a guestimate as to when the explosion event will occure?
My accountant always wanted a business forecast from me and this may be just what I'm looking for.
They can definitely tell the cause of glass that broke. That could lead them into what to look for in the unbroken panes. If an manufacturer had a problem with frequent breakage, they'd go through all that to find the cause so they could alter their production or design to eliminate the problem.
But, labs like that probably charge $100-$200 an hour, and it could take many hours. It would not be practical for a homeowner -- replacing all the windows would be cheaper. But, the manufacturer (not the local dealer) ought to be concerned if you told him several spontaneously broke.
Excatly my point. Glass breakage has a cause. It's usually not rocket science and spending hundreds of bucks per hour is a waste of money.
Considering 30 windows as an average per house to have 3 pop suddenly after 9 years is a 10% failure rate. Now consider the average life of 20 years for a window it would be reasonable to say that the homeowner can expect all of their windows to break in the next 10 years. I wouldn't recomend a customer replace all their windows after 9 years.... find the problem and fix it.
And for the poster mentioning Andersen having a problem .... yes they had a problem as did every other manufacturer did when they first started using aragon gas. Understanding the molecular size of gasses and sealents used to capture them was overlooked. Good thing for Andersen is they came up with a fix, to my knowledge no other manufacturer dealt with the problem.... There are lots of windows out there that have insulating values no better then single pane glass.... and you don't have to pay me 100's of bucks to find them, I can drive down the street and point them out just by looking.
yup...
Science Channel (think it was the SC) did a special on that just...
base cause is thermal expansion of the glass in the frame putting it under compression and adding resonace... ie... wind, music or slam the door or what ever you have to shock vibrate the glass... and then there was rapid temperture change of the glass... this is a sometimes not very often thing..
high glass failures attribeuted to inferior glass or un-uniform thicknesses or uneaqual tempering or the glass is too thin for the application...
Ford minivans (the one that replaced the AreoStar) are ate up with this problem for some time... word is Ford fixed it...
and why are you covering fer BV...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
There folks there who really NEED help. Can't say how often I refer some to here.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
if the glass has been toughened it could be due to a nickel inclusion that is in the pane.
I have had pieces explode on me whilst just carrying them around.
If i remember right they reckon on one inclusion per tonne of glass i think??
it goes something like this.
the inclusion sets up stress in the sheet and over time it just causes the glass to pop!!
i don't know if it is the same for regular float glass.
wilson glass is where I'll be ordering my shower stall enclosure from.
Interesting enough I just read about expoding glass in their website 5 am this morning....heres what they said.....and you can google them if you want. they seem awesome.
The shower I'm finishing up is fairly big so I wanted some knowledgeable....plus they sell the stuff but don't install which I like even better. The costs are way low compared to all the locals around here.
Be well
a...
Exploding Glass: Tempered Glass is very strong but the edges are sensitive. How Strong is it? Never let the edges of the glass touch the tile. Always set the glass on wood or rubber blocks. If the glass ever even touches the tile, the glass may get chipped, but even worse, it may explode. That is one of the major differences between glass and wood. Wood seldom explodes. Glass explodes pretty often. Not really. I can only remember one customer out of hundreds, that had his glass explode and that was before I wrote these pages. We argued over who was going to pay for the glass; finally he let me pay for half. He never knew that he hit with the glass because the glass explodes at the same moment it is hit. That happens at work occasionally. Our workers will swear they didn't hit anything but I've noticed the glass only explodes when they are going through a doorway.
To avoid exploding glass you must never let the glass touch the tile. Duck tape on the bottom corners will help. When setting the glass into the opening, it really helps to have one person with a suction cup on the outside and another person on the inside guiding the bottom of the door.
It is essential to have a stud or two behind the tile where the door is to be mounted: For good tiling advice, I advise you to go to John Bridge's Tile Forum or buy his book from us.
I believe that all tile now days is set onto heavy-duty cement board, which definitely increases the strength. There is some controversy about wheather it is necessary to hit a stud with the screws. But having the stud right behind the hinges increases the rigidity of the wall.
If you are unsure about wheather your tile wall will handle the weight then you could use a header across the top and/or pivots instead of hinges. This will take the weight completely off the wall.
Although I really don't believe anyone today tiles directly onto sheetrock, if you do have that condition then your bathroom is only going to last a couple of years and it would be unsafe, unwise, and a big mistake to install a heavy glass shower door. But you could if you use a header and pivots. Unless your floor is so rotten that your door will fall through into the living room. Don't even think about asking us to be repsonsible for your wall conditions. Some thoughts
The secret of Zen in two words is, "Not always so"!
When we meet, we say, Namaste'..it means..
That sounds more like advice from an individual retail installer than from a manufacturer. By now, I'm sure you've read the thread, Andy, and seen some of the other reasons. This client at BV sounds like no damage was done to the glass in place and it had been there for years. given that, it has to be an internal manufacturing defect
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
The BV post sounded pretty sketchy to me...plus listing the times of explosion...I need a lot more info, got any? Don't worry, we can fix that later!
What you see is what you get...I feel the same way too, kind of like Columbo - "There's just this one more thing Ma'am...."
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
This is my first time in this forum, so I hope I am doing this correctly!
This is a really interesting thread and there have been a number of really excellent ideas proposed...I am going to add a couple for consideration that I hope prove equally interesting.
If the windows in question were tempered (which I don't believe based on the information provided), then spontaneous breakage would be a possibility.
Tempered glass is "regular" glass that has been toughened or heat strengthened by taking the glass up to 1300F and then rapidly cooling it. This causes the exterior surface of the glass to compress while the interior of the glass is still quite warm and still in expansion mode. Ultimately, this translates into an exterior compression layer and an interior tension layer.
When the compression layer is breached, then all that tension is released (kind of like a spring) and POW! there goes the window.
As mentioned in another post, tempered glass is tough on the face, but the edges are really quite fragile.
One interesting characteristic of tempered glass is that if it has edge damage it might not "release" immediately, preferring to wait around for awhile until it has a chance to scare the @$#%@^@% out of someone sitting at a stoplight in their car or else eating breakfast in their home and either a patio door or their oven door suddenly POPS... It makes for a great conversation starter!
When glass is manufactured it might have what are called "inclusions" left in the product. These inclusions are usually nickle sulfide or perhaps other trace elements and while generally harmless if the glass receives no further treatment, these inclusions can cause significant problems in tempered glass.
Most glass with inclusions that is being heated for tempering will break during the tempering process, some of them are just stubborn enough to make it past that process and into the actual finished product. These inclusions, like their edge damaged cousins, love to wait around awhile until everyone is quietly relaxing and then POW! no more glass in the window frame.
But, I don't believe that the window breakage in this case was due to a tempering issue. Rather, I suspect that these were "ordinary" annealed IGU's (Insulating Glass Units) that imploded rather than exploded.
Regarding the "tempered" vs. "annealed" glass difference, I installed a sliding glass door with double-pane glass in the wall leading to a covered porch back in the late 70s. A couple of years later, one winter morning I was in that room and kept hearing a crackling sound. I couldn't figure out what it was from until I opened the vertical blinds covering the door. As I watched, a matrix of tiny cracks kept expanding across the face of the inner pane of glass, producing the cracking sound every time a new set of cracks appeared. Eventually the entire face was covered with cracks, leaving nothing bigger than 1/4 to 1/2 inch without a crack in it.The glass didn't go all at once and fall out. It took a while for the cracking process to occur. Then the totally cracked sheet stayed in place.After I bought a replacement IG unit, I laid the door with the remaining pane in place on top of newspaper on the porch, covered it with a cloth, and dropped a hammer in the middle. Whoomp! That whole piece went at once into tiny piece.Does the slow cracking process of the first pane mean that I had annealed glass rather than tempered?
Breakage in tempered glass typically propagates at the speed of sound, I am trying to remember any instances that I have heard of that result in tempered glass slowly breaking as you have described.
Tempered glass that has broken but is still in place (hasn't collapsed into a pile of glass chips yet) will often continue to propagate additional cracks resulting in the crackling sound often associated with tempered glass breakage (even a pile of broken tempered glass on the floor will crackle for awhile as the little pieces break into yet smaller pieces). It is possible to watch the additonal cracks growing and spreading out of the original break pattern.
And as WayneL pointed out a few years back in the thread, it is fairly easy (although it can be time consuming) to pinpoint the origin of the initial break and to determine the reason for the breakage.
If your door glass broke into the tiny pieces normally associated with tempered glass breakage, then you had tempered glass in your door and not annealed. Although I don't know why the break propagated at a rate where could actually watch it, that is really interesting and I am going to be doing some research (defined as asking the right people) what could be the cause of a "slow" break as you described.
Thanks
I was loading a defunct sliding door glass panel ( for my future greenhouse) into my van and whacked the corner on something. Ahhhh what a show! Poof! It was gone into a pile of diamonds that went on like a bowl of rice krispies for a few minutes..LOL
God, what a mess.
Got me a new collection here now, and every time I even walk by, I think of that scenario.Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
Oh Yeah!
I have broken a lot of glass in my life (most of it intentionally), and I still enjoy "popping" a tempered panel, particularly when there are people around who aren't expecting it...
Of course, as you said, clean up can be a pain
I was in the glass biz for 25 years and also had some fun breaking up tempered. Heck, I've tossed door-sized tempered off a 2nd story fire escape onto a gravel drive and had it just bounce. Other times I've been able to tap lightly on the corner and have it blow up.When I have needed to dispose of tempered, for example to get an oversized piece into a trailer or dumpster, I wrap/tape the piece up in visqueen, then break, and it is contained easily.
Having cleaned up and replaced many glass doors after homes have been broken into. It's easy to tell the amatuers from professionals.
Amatuers will wack away with a hammer on the glass making lots of noise and usually give up. Pros stick a screwdriver or awl in between glass and frame... only sound is falling glass.
A really good tool for popping tempered is a spring-loaded center punch.
In fact, it is recommended as an emergency tool should you need to escape from your vehicle after having landed in the water submerged.
View Image
Yep. I have been carrying tempered and have it turn into a pile of chips for no apparent reason. Then you are left standing with a few pieces in each hand and nothing in between. It can be a surprise!
I have known people who were afraid of tempered glass because they had had a few experiences of it breaking while handling it!
What did you do in the glass biz?
Was in the art glass biz for my first career, now a carp for the last ten yrs.Primarily did stained/leaded work, but also included etch/carved, slumping, painting, the usual gamut for a commercial art glass studio.
I've done a bit of stained/leaded artglass work myself, but it has been a number of years for me as well. It was a lot of fun!
When I left the business, we were doing a lot of encapsulation of large panels in IGU's.
The folks I worked with were making panels, but no encapsulation.
oberon,
Did you ever see the car wrecker's trick? (Do not try this at home) (Or at a friend's house)
A man in a junkyard showed me once how to break tempered glass. He threw a ceramic chip from a broken spark plug at it. The chip was about half the size of a green pea. The first time, it bounced off. The second time, it bounced off and I was starting to laugh. The third time, the side window of the car shattered and fell like raindrops.
Ron
I have broken tempered with a sparkplug, but never with just the ceramic chip...I gotta try that!!
Thanks!
Car thieves in Vancouver wear the ceramic end of a sparkplug on a string as a necklace.
About three decades ago, I was out hunting inanimate targets (they're very sneaky and hard to track down). My trusty Daisy BB gun jammed and it seemed nothing I did would dislodge it. Finally, it was laying on the tailgate of my 57 as I dropped some oil into the filler hole. It, almost immediately, discharged. The BB hit my back window and bounced off. I in panic, but nothing had happened. Almost a minute later, as I was walking away, I heard the cracking sound described in other posts. When I looked back, I saw the cracking starting at a bottom corner, then spread over the entire window, just before the pieces fell out. As such, I wonder what the longest delay could be between a hit and the full cracking of a tempered window?Anyway, I have to wonder what kind of gaps they left around your windows when building it. My first suspicion would be too much pressure from some source (so back the someone else's settling question).
For movable sashes, generally the sashes will jam long before there's enough force to crack the glass.Of course, something as minor as a misplaced staple bearing against the edge of the glass would be enough to break it, even with minimal pressure.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
Piffin,
Had a rather strange exploding glass experience "literally" a few years ago.
My family was gathered at my parents house eating dinner, and we hear a loud "pop" come from one of the kitchen cabinets. We open the door up, and there are glass shards everywhere, even embedded in the wood.
A glass had exploded into nothing more than tiny fragments. The base of the glass that spontaneously exploded was still there though. It was probably ten years old.
Weeeeeeiiiird.......
Jon
are you trying to divert us to the 'ghosts' thread? LOL
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I am glad I am not going crazy and my house is not possessed!!! I am having the same problem with exploding windows. I live in Rochester, NY. My family has been in this 4 bedroom 2800 sq ft home about 10 years now, it was built in 1996 and many windows. It started about 6 years ago; winter, when I noticed a window pane had shattered in familiy room with a few shards on the floor. I thought it was my kids throwing something in the house and not admitting to it. But then my husband and I noticed the shattering was only the inside pane and no oblious hole in pane.
Several months later, summer, late at night I heard a popping sound, then glass falling to floor. This time it was laundry room window, bottom half; it was also shattered but mostly still in place. Weeks later I heard another exploding sound, this time it was my son's bedroom, top pane; same shattering and more glass on floor.
Since then it's been one window after another, in different rooms whether its summer or winter. Just last week we had a window replaced in dinning room that was shattered the same way, 2 days latter we all heard the pop; in afternoon, the window next to the new pane exploded. And then a bedroom window that was replaced at the same time (the same 2 days later) exploded. The window repair company that recently serviced us, are coming today to replace the window they repaired that exploded. My husband had a conversation over the phone with this company about these windows, because now it's not just the original windows in the house but replacements as well. They say it's strange but we'll talk when they arrive today about 4 pm.
We have had about 10-12 windows replaced sofar! I am ready to move!!
Can my home owners insurance cover this?
HELP!!
Gail
Edited 2/25/2009 10:02 am ET by gailwin
Sounds like your house might be settling or shifting how is the foudation.
had the same thing a few years back w/ an Andersen window, never did find out why, But did a lot of yelling @ the kids!
so..... ?????
what style window ... Double Hung.. Casement.. Fixed Glass .... Picture window
sliding door ?
tempered or regular... when it explodes .. is it shards or little uniform sized niblets ?
in either case it is probably either edge defects / stress
or inclusions
who is the original mfr.? Mike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Kinda gruff there Mikey, calling it the Original Mf'r...dontcha think? (G)Spheramid Enterprises Architectural Woodworks
Repairs, Remodeling, Restorations
They kill Prophets, for Profits.
What kind of siding do you have? Examine it around the failed windows for heat damage.I'm guessing that maybe a neighbor's window is reflecting/concentrating the sun onto your house, causing the windows to thermally stress and pop.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
Although it sounds like the original windows may be breaking due to negative pressure due to argon gas loss; whether that is the cause of the original breakage or not it doesn't explain breakage in the replacements.
Were the new units complete sash replacements or only IG (glass) replacement?
If they were full sash then I would want to examine the frames as possibly causing excessive stress in the sash/glass. If they were IG only then I would make sure that the original sash and frame were square and that the new IG's were installed allowing sufficient space around the edges and that the IG's were not forced into the sash in any way during replacement.
"...negative pressure due to argon gas loss..."How could loss of argon gas result in negative pressure? If a leak in the seal occurs, pressure inside the window will equalize with air pressure outside.
BruceT
There is a theoretical difference in the diffusion rates of argon and air that can cause argon to diffuse out more rapidly than air diffuses in. How often this occurs to a degree significant enough to cause failure is hard to say.Another probably more common mechanism is the simple solar heating of the assembly, causing the air to expand and force its way out. Then, as the glass cools in the evening, the air contracts and pulls the panels inward. Failure could occur in either the pressure or vacuum mode.But one to which I alluded is the direct failure of the glass due to thermal stress, sometimes caused by the focused reflection of the sun off the glass (concave due to "suck") of an adjacent building, or due to ice on the failing window acting as a lens.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
There is a theoretical difference in the diffusion rates of argon and air that can cause argon to diffuse out more rapidly than air diffuses in. How often this occurs to a degree significant enough to cause failure is hard to say
Not theoretical, this is a very real phenomenon because argon will, given the right set of conditions, migrate thru the seal without a "seal failure", and it won't be replaced by air because of the differing diffusion rates thru the undamaged seal.
In the years since this problem was first identified there have been studies and testing to determine the cause and effects of argon migration and there have been changes made by fabricators in both materials and manfacturing procedures to minimize this issue.
This phenomenon is very well known and understood in the industry, and today, using the best systems, argon will migrate at a rate of about 1% per year. At that rate of migration, any loss of energy performance will be negligible.
Another probably more common mechanism is the simple solar heating of the assembly, causing the air to expand and force its way out. Then, as the glass cools in the evening, the air contracts and pulls the panels inward. Failure could occur in either the pressure or vacuum mode.
IG's are designed to allow for expansion and contraction as you describe. The only way to force air out in the sense of acting like a bellows is to breach the seal in which case there is a different problem entirely.
However, this same action of expansion/contraction does affect the argon migration rate - but again that is a typically a long term process. The collapsed IG's that are being repaired or replaced today were generally built in the late 80's or early 90's. Even with an insufficient understanding of the the possibility of migration using the materials and techniques in use at the time, it still took ten years or more for enough argon to migrate to result in collapsed glass.
It is still possible today to get collapsed glass, but it is almost always the result of a manufacturing flaw rather than a materials issue - whereas in the past it was generally related to the materials used at the time. It is rare enough today that some manufacturers will want to perform a post analysis of the failed unit to proactively determine the cause of the collapse.
Curiously, you cannot get collapsed glass if the seal has failed. So, collapsed glass also indicates that the seal system is still intact.
I built my house in 1991 with all anderson windows it all makes sense now
Glad to have helped.
Glass breakage in collapsed units is almost always limited to smaller windows or shapes simply because the stress (there's that word yet again!) induced by "bending" the glass as it collapses exceeds the break strength of the glass.
A large picture window is very unlikely to break because the glass will touch in the middle before the glass reaches breaking stress levels.
On the other hand a smaller glass sheet or a shape may well reach breaking stress before the glass panes touch. Basic geometry, glass in the larger window has to bend less to close the gap between the lites versus the glass in the smaller window.
In a shape the glass has to bend in ways that nature never intended and that results in significant stress build up and often breakage.
Oberon- Any idea why a unit that is collapsed (touching) can also fog? Is it the RH inside the unit rising do to the vacuum?
That would be seal failure -- humidity's getting in. Note that seal failure need not be complete, and that some units (for use/transport at altitude) are shipped with valves that will relieve pressure (simulating partial seal failure) without causing complete seal failure.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
The glass wouldn't be touching in the center if the seal was failed.
Sledge,
Was it really cold when you saw "fog" in a collapsed glass unit?
I am curious how often have you seen collapsed units with fog?
Last one I saw, about a month ago,it was in the 20's. They weren't completely fogged it's a patchy look, grayish spots varying from a couple inches down to very small spots. It was a sun room of casements, out of 26 units, 21 were collapsed, 14 showed spots between the glass. All units the same size.
Moisture gets in and sort of corrodes the coating on the inside of the glass.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
If anything was "getting in"... water vapor included they wouldn't be collapsed.
Only if enough gets in.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith
I seriously doubt the seal breaks, lets in only moisture then reseals maintaining a vacuum.... but I might be wrong.
Most of the windows at the beach house failed (fogged) after 15 years. Severe corrosion of the aluminum glass spacers (the outer frames are vinyl) caused a complete seal failure. Two panels out of four sliding glass door panels had the outer pane explode. Both of these panels were the fogged panels. Neither was the sliding panel. We blamed birds or errant volleyballs but now I'm not sure...
Eric
Your door glass would have been tempered. Tempered glass can "spontaneously" burst due to several different reasons. Seal failure isn't one of them, however.
Sorry for the late reply. I was doing some travelling and didn't have internet access...
The industry standard for the level of "dryness" in an IG airspace is dew point at 0 degrees F. It has to be darn cold outside for the temperature in the space to get down to zero, but if the temp in the space goes below the dew point temperature (whatever it is), you will get some level of "fog" in the space.
The dryer the airspace, the lower the dew point (I realize that I am preaching to the choir here) and one way to increase dryness in the airspace of an IG is adding desiccant in the space.
Just as argon migrates out of the IG space thru the seal it is also true that air will eventually migrate back in - it's just a lot slower. Given enough time a collapsed unit will eventually return to "normal" as air replaces the missing argon. But even before the unit begins to "return to normal" it is possible that air is entering the space, and if air is getting in, then so is moisture. Again, while this is not due to what would be considered a "conventional" seal failure, there is still exchange between inside and outside the IG airspace.
If enough moisture gets into the space to saturate the desiccant then the dew point may rise to a point where there will be moisture-related issues with the IG as well as collapse. Obviously seeing moisture in the space due to this condition is very temperature related. I am a bit surprised that you saw it with the temp in the 20's, but if enough moisture gets in the space (and it really doesn't take all that much), then you can get moisture issues in the space.
And while this is a relatively rare phenomenon (maybe 1 in a 100 collapsed units will show moisture issues), it does happen. As you noted, you saw several of them in the same installation. Part of that is because argon and air migration can be environment-related so it certainly isn't unheard of that when you get one window with moisture in a collapsed IG it is possible to see the same issue with adjacent windows.
Seems about a year ago on this forum, that a fellow was having problems with a second story row of windows suddenly cracking, one by one.
He had two dormer features on the bottom floor with gable metal roofing. I believe he found that when the sun was at certain times of the day, the Gavaliume metal was bouncing the light and heat on to the windows... Never heard how he fixed it.
Bill
I remember it. In that case it was almost certainly a case of thermal stress related to the location of the windows and excessive heat build up due to reflection - very similar to what DanH mentioned in his post.
Glass is actually a very poor conductor of heat. A window that is partially in direct sunlight and partially in shade can have significant stress build up because of the temperature differences between the shaded portion and the full sun portion.
When heated, glass expands. When part of a window is in sunlight and part of it is in shade, you can figure 50psi stress for each degree of temperature difference between the sunlit and shaded sections. Forty degrees difference and you are looking at 2000psi of induced stress. This is enough to result in breakage of annealed glass, particularly if there is a flaw of any sort in the glass edge. And a 40 degree (or more) differential is readily achieveable in the real world.
The best fix for the OP that you mentioned was to change to tempered glass in all his windows exposed to the roof reflection. Tempered glass has significantly more resistance to thermal breakage than does annealed.
Edited 3/1/2009 11:51 am ET by Oberon
Had the same thing happened to our house Wwest of rochester in w.n.y. with Anderson wimdows that were 15 years old , 1 of my half rounds the outside paine shattered , the Anderson rep checked all the rest of the windows also and replaced the half round , no charge , he said the gas leaks out and in the winter the glass paine's come together and when they touch , cold to hot the have potencial to explode like that????
Big stab in the dark, but what about a thermal shock.
I remember sitting at a traffic light this winter watching snow slide off the roof of my truck onto a nice warm windshield. Then I remember watching the glass make a 2 foot long horzontial crack right before my eyes.:>(
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
I used to do warranty work for a major window manufacturer that begins with an "A"
We would often have to replace sash for a defect called collapsed glass, where as the others are saying, the argon leaks out and atmospheric pressure pushes the panes together.
Used to use a laser device to measure the space between the panes. Below a certain measurement and the sash would be replaced. Happened on alot of skylights and alot of casement sash.
Always was more distorted on cold winter days.
This company had a 20 year warranty on the glass.
Rich
You guys left me scratching my head over why I was called into this thread until I reviewed it all, LOLAfter five years I have no memory of it, except that it brought Oberon into discussion here, and in all my years, I have not seen anyone who knows glass more than he does, so I cede this thread to his responce.;)
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I didn't notice the date stamp..........How do these things get posted again?
Rich
In this case it was a wonderful situation where a newbie first time poster apparently was searching thru old posts seeking an answer to her dilemma and finding what she was looking for thought well enough of it to post a reply.
Thank you gailwin, and Welcome to Breaktime.
94969.19 In the beginning there was Breaktime...
94969.1 Photo Gallery Table of Contents
I recently bought a house with Sears brand Super K (kyrpton filled)thermal mirror windows installed in 1994. We have now had 3 windows explode within 3 months. All are the inner pane of the bottom window. This has happened in 3 different rooms 2 during daylight one at night.
Do you know why this is happening? The glass guy that replaced the first two said something must be hitting them. But I watched the one explode tonight. All of a sudden a loud pop happened and the window literally exploded.
I recently bought a house with Sears brand Super K (kyrpton filled)thermal mirror windows installed in 1994. We have now had 3 windows explode within 3 months. All are the inner pane of the bottom window. This has happened in 3 different rooms 2 during daylight one at night.
Do you know why this is happening? The glass guy that replaced the first two said something must be hitting them. But I watched the one explode tonight. All of a sudden a loud pop happened and the window literally exploded.
Is the sun reflecting off a nearby buillding and being concentrated on your windows?
Read this whole thread thru and you will know as much as I do = maybe more, since this is from something started 8 years ago and I forgot all about it...
Best of luck and if you learn the cause please do share with the rest of us.