Window smashed all by its self!!!

[KingboyD]

At 1am this morning me and my good lady were woken by cracking from the bathroom! I went to investigate and found the internal glass pain of the top part of the window unit was in the process of breaking up!

The external piece of glass is still in one piece! My initial thoughts were was the building moving!?? Not very likely in a terrace house built in 1890 but I checked anyway, the bathroom is directly above the kitchen, There are some existing small cracks in the plaster work in the kitchen but nothing has changed since the window cracked up.

The only other causes of this I can think of are the extream cold of -10C it has been for some time now, poorly fitted window in an irregular old terrace window aperture.

Any thoughts on this??

Ill post some pics tomorrow.


Ta Paul.

 

[Nige F]

are you describing a double glazed unit - if so I reckon it`s due to the cold - as you thought

 

[ColJack]

mine did that too..
any tiny chip or flaw at the edge of a piece of glas is enough to give it a start point and as you say, temperature fluctuations can start it off..

 

[KingboyD]

Yeah a double glazed unit, Thanks for the input guys


Heres a pic

 

[alittlerespect]

Hi

As Coljack has already commented the damage has been caused by thermal stressing of the glass, which can be initiated by perimeter edage damage or scratching of the glass. However, I would be interested in knowing the thickness of the existing glass as it appears to be a bit on the thin side going by the photo.

Minimum thickness should be 4mm.

Regards

 

[KingboyD]

4mm! Its closer to 2mm

 

[Master of None]

Is it a Velux unit?
One of my girlfriends small Velux units broke like that on the inside. 7 years old. She insisted on getting Velux in to fix it even though I told her it would be cheaper to get a glazier. Called Velux and they came the next day and replaced it FOC. Not only that they replaced all 4 windows of the same size saying they had had an unacceptable failure rate on windows this size.
Sadly after it happen we spoke to some nahbours who had paid to have there windows repaired without even calling Velux for the same issue.
Great service Velux. Quality windows and quality service.