SAFETY GLASS – GLASS SAFETY

Flooding our homes with natural light and ventilation – windows offer us an opportunity to connect the inside to our outside spaces. But – did you know that accidents involving windows and doors are a major concern, particularly for small children? Windows and doors manufactured in Australia are done so under strict standards and code – in particular AS1288 relates to the glass to be used.

So what is safety glass!

AS1288 indicated that areas within the home that are at a high risk of incident involving glass are required to be fitted with what’s known as Grade A safety glass. The use of safety glass reduces the risk of injury as it is tougher to break and won’t fracture into dangerous shards when broken.

So as a guide, safety glass must be used in these types of areas (although it must be noted this is not an exhaustive list – it is merely a guide).

• ALL doors and sidelites (those windows or fixed panels of glass that sit beside our doors),
• Any panel around stairs,
• Glass that is situated at a low level (or lowlite),
• The bathroom, probably has the biggest impact as you shower, mirror and windows are all required to be installed using safety glass. 

I can hear your question from here, I know you want to know, what types of glass are called safety glasses.

There are two types of typical safety glass available – toughened and laminated glass. Let’s explore them further:

Laminated glass

The main benefits of laminate glass are:

By its very name, it implies its construction – laminate glass consists of 2 panels of glass that have been laminated through heating to bond together with an interlayer.

The main benefits of laminate glass are:

• Due to this bonding process – the glass will not shatter and fall apart. The inter layer holds the glass together and forms what could be described as a spider web pattern.
• It is held in stock sheet by most glazing companies – so replacement panels of glass are easily made.
• The PVB vinyl interlayer does not provide any visual difference to a normal piece (annealed) of glass.
• Because of the special bonding process – it is not easy to break through and will take the force of several impacts.
• Laminated glass through its 2 sheets and interlayer provides very good thermal and sound reducing properties – most glasses used for sound reduction are laminated glass products.
  
  

An image of a broken panel of laminate glass on an entrance door.

Toughened glass

Toughened glass is a single panel of glass that has been heated or furnaced to change the molecular structure of the glass – making it super strong.

The main benefits of toughened glass are:

• If broken toughened glass will fracture in to tiny cubes of glass.
• It can be cheaper than laminated glass – although if you break a panel it cannot usually be replaced immediately, as each panel is cut and furnaced as needed, not being readily available off the shelf – or should I say glass truck.
• Because it is only a single panel, it can be lighter in weight resulting in less wear and tear on your hardware such as rollers etc.

An image of a broken panel of toughened glass – yes you will have a gaping hole when it breaks.

There are other forms of safety glass products, however they tend to be derivatives of these two. At Central Glass and Aluminium we frame your views with the right glass for the right purpose – ensure your supplier does that too!