Shower door exploded in middle of night

tomhalloween

Ok so shower door exploded on its own in the middle of last night.
Does anyone know if i can get a replacement glass panel or would i have to buy whole unit?

tomhalloween

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red sean

Do you know why it happened?
I'd check that first before replacing. Was the glass under pressure?

tomhalloween

red sean wrote: »

Do you know why it happened?
I'd check that first before replacing. Was the glass under pressure?

Glass was under no pressure that
I know of. The shower had not been used in two weeks.
I did an internet search and its been known to happen from time to time.
I heard a noise around 6am but put it down to my imagination!

Alun

If you have an idea of who the manufacturer is, I'd contact them straight away. If there is a known problem of some sort with the glass in that model, they may well replace it for free for you.

tomhalloween

Alun wrote: »

If you have an idea of who the manufacturer is, I'd contact them straight away. If there is a known problem of some sort with the glass in that model, they may well replace it for free for you.

I have no idea as to manufacturer Alun I am afraid.

zl1whqvjs75cdy

On a side not that would have scared the ****e out of me. Can't help though I'm afraid. Maybe your shower's haunted?

tomhalloween

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

On a side not that would have scared the ****e out of me. Can't help though I'm afraid. Maybe your shower's haunted?

Ha Ha! that was my initial reaction. Then were we broken into!

MicktheMan

Looks very similar to my shower door which has been fine for more than 10 years now. How old was yours?

tomhalloween

MicktheMan wrote: »

Looks very similar to my shower door which has been fine for more than 10 years now. How old was yours?

Only about 3-4 yrs old. We did an extension to the house. I hope to contact the builder this eve and see if he cAn remember where he picked it up.

Alun

There's usually a makers mark on these things somewhere, often a tiny little rectangular badge hidden somewhere on the frame. Otherwise like you said, if it's a recent addition, the builder may well know.

74merc

This is not uncommon as I heard a feature about it on the radio one day. Apparently heating and cooling cycles cause internal tension to build up, then suddenly it gives way and the glass explodes. It happened to a TV stand belonging to a colleague of mine also.

LIFFY FISHING

Check your house insurance, it might be covered under household goods, would bw cheaper to replace than try to dissasemble the door frame to reglaze.

tomhalloween

No manufacturers marks anywhere. I will check regarding house insurance if its covered. Thanks guys for all the suggestions!!

irelandspurs

How's your wife's head?

tomhalloween

irelandspurs wrote: »

How's your wife's head?

She wont have to be told twice again.

Skobie 69

tomhalloween wrote: »

Ok so shower door exploded on its own in the middle of last night.
Does anyone know if i can get a replacement glass panel or would i have to buy whole unit?

The same happened to me with my shower when one of the straight glass panels exploded spontaneously last May. I took the panel out & had it reglassed at a glass shop. It was handy enough but cost @ €150 or so.

Then this week one of the curved panels just exploded again spontaneously. No one was even in the house. This time impossible to replace. Was quoted €600 plus. A complete new unit would cost @ €250 so I'll have to rip the entire shower enclosure out despose of it & replace it which is a pain as there was nothing at all wrong with it before these spontaneous explosions. My shower is in 10 years & the manufacturers are no longer in business so I'll have to fork out for this. Not sure if my house insurance covers it either.

I did some research & microscopic imperfections in the glass manufacturing process can cause glass to stress over time & crack. You won't even spot such imperfections with the eye so its impossible to prevent it. My glass is safety glass like yours so any cracking will lead to the glass spontaneously breaking into millions of little pieces like yours - the idea is that the manufacturers are trying to avoid serious injury should a large glass shard break off & cut into someone in the shower. Still it doesn't seem very safe to me & a nightmare to clean up.

alexlyons

Skobie 69 wrote: »

Then this week one of the curved panels just exploded again spontaneously. No one was even in the house. This time impossible to replace. Was quoted €600 plus. A complete new unit would cost @ €250 so I'll have to rip the entire shower enclosure out despose of it & replace it which is a pain as there was nothing at all wrong with it before these spontaneous explosions.

Why don't you just buy the new one and whip out the curved glass from that? If you were planning on replacing just the glass then you should be able to do that.

Yes you'll be getting rid of a good unit, but its far less work that taking out the enclosure and replacing it, added to the fact anything could go wrong. You may be able to flog the unit without the curved glass on done deal or adverts, even €20 would be better than throwing it out, heck even giving it to someone for free would be better.

To me it makes no sense to pull out the unit as you may not get a 100% seal and suffer annoying leaks down the line. And its far less work.

Skobie 69

alexlyons wrote: »

Why don't you just buy the new one and whip out the curved glass from that? If you were planning on replacing just the glass then you should be able to do that.

Yes you'll be getting rid of a good unit, but its far less work that taking out the enclosure and replacing it, added to the fact anything could go wrong. You may be able to flog the unit without the curved glass on done deal or adverts, even €20 would be better than throwing it out, heck even giving it to someone for free would be better.

To me it makes no sense to pull out the unit as you may not get a 100% seal and suffer annoying leaks down the line. And its far less work.

That sounds like a lot of work & I'm still buying a new unit. Then the new curved glass will have to be the exact same specs, length, thickness, curvature etc. to fit the existing frame of the old shower. Can't see that as an option at all much as though I wish I could do that.

alexlyons

Skobie 69 wrote: »

That sounds like a lot of work & I'm still buying a new unit. Then the new curved glass will have to be the exact same specs, length, thickness, curvature etc. to fit the existing frame of the old shower. Can't see that as an option at all much as though I wish I could do that.

It sounds like a lot less work than replacing an entire unit!

It's also not much more work than sourcing the curved glass and installing it, only extra is you just have to remove it from the new unit....

It's definitely worth a look to see if you can get a unit with the same glass, you might just get lucky and save a huge amount of work.

vicwatson

MOST but not all Home Insurance Policies have accidental damage cover, check the policies to confirm.

Skobie 69

alexlyons wrote: »

It sounds like a lot less work than replacing an entire unit!

It's also not much more work than sourcing the curved glass and installing it, only extra is you just have to remove it from the new unit....

It's definitely worth a look to see if you can get a unit with the same glass, you might just get lucky and save a huge amount of work.

No the curved glass that exploded was enclosed in an aluminium frame. You'd have to get an exact match to fit glass from one frame to another, fittings etc would be different on 2 different models. Then I'd have to go to a glass shop to fit the new glass into that frame. When I brought the frame into them they told me forget about replacing it - much easier & cheaper to replace the whole unit. I wish you were right though, I'd prefer to keep the existing unit.

kyeev

I've just joined the shower glass shatter club.
Last night around 2am, the glass wall (not the door) shattered into a thousand little bits.
It must be due to glass imperfections exacerbated by the hot weather/cool nights we've been having this May.
Only have it installed about 2.5 years.

Mad craic to be woken in the night with this massive crashing noise!

BryanF

Nickel Sulfide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

caviardreams

This just happened me last night - what a mess, glass everywhere. Somewhat relieved to find it's not just me I guess!

In my case it's the shower screen over the bath, so hopefully easy to replace, though there is still a small 6inch glass section of the screen attached to the wall and bath. Then the section that is hunged onto this is what shattered. Seems like just getting a whole new screen, and the bit remaining taken off (if somebody will do it) is the best way forward, rather than just trying to get somebody in to fit a pane to the existing hingle/unshattered section?

Has anyone claimed via home insurance for this? Not sure if it is worth it for losing the no claims bonus and also want to get it sorted asap.

fryup

has there ever been instances of people been badly injured whilst in a shower ??

surely you could sue the shower door manufacturers to high heavens in such a scenario??

caviardreams

fryup wrote: »

has there ever been instances of people been badly injured whilst in a shower ??

surely you could sue the shower door manufacturers to high heavens in such a scenario??

I'm fortunate to be honest - there are bits of glass inside the toilet bowl and the sink and the works! If you were anywhere inside the bathroom you would have been injured.

I have a right job of clearing up a bathful of tiny glass particles today.

The shower screen itself must be over 10 years old now so the manufacturers may just claim that it could have been caused by anything e..g a tiny chip somewhere that the user caused, so I am not sure how the legal side would go but probably difficult to prove one way or the other.

ctrl-alt-delete

This happened me before but totally my fault.

Came home after a night of heavy drinking, went to bed. At some stage during the night i went to the toilet and I know i stumbled into it as i made my way into the bathroom.

It did not choose that point to explode though. It was on a slightly later visit when i was sitting on the pot feeling sorry for myself. Suffice to say I was in the right place to sh1t myself when it actually exploded.

If you think it is a horrible job cleaning up all the bits of glass, it is much worse when you are hungover

Darc19

caviardreams wrote: »

I'm fortunate to be honest - there are bits of glass inside the toilet bowl and the sink and the works! If you were anywhere inside the bathroom you would have been injured.

I have a right job of clearing up a bathful of tiny glass particles today.

The shower screen itself must be over 10 years old now so the manufacturers may just claim that it could have been caused by anything e..g a tiny chip somewhere that the user caused, so I am not sure how the legal side would go but probably difficult to prove one way or the other.

Less catastrophe syndrome please.

ALL shower doors are made of safety glass and simply shatter if put under pressure. If you were in the shower you might get a slight grazing.

Breakage can be for many reasons. Most likely it will be the user hitting something off it, or not checking the fittings have not come loose. The shatter can happen a few minutes, or even days after

It survived ten years, so the likelihood of an inherent manufacturing fault is practically zero.

10-10-20

I'm not saying that injuries won't happen from fragmented tempered glass, but the way that tempered glass such as this breaks (due to inclusions or impact), almost instantly creates an impressive shower of small ~7mm diameter fragments which don't tend to puncture the skin in the same way as plate-glass would. You'd walk away fine from a tempered glass implosion, but had it been plate glass which had broken you may well expect to have lacerations and skin punctures.

Laminate is a secondary option as the glass is sandwiched between plastic, but the prices are higher for the same thickness of glass.

Sleahy296

The same thing happened to my sisters shower, and it was a Merlyn shower enclosure, in an empty house. They contacted Merlyn who has a lifetime guarantee on the glass in their shower enclosures, and they replaced it absolutely no charge. It wa about 5 yeard old at that time. Super to deal with.