FAQs

What is annealed glass?  
Annealing is the process of slowly cooling glass in order to relieve its internal stresses. Annealing glass is critical to its durability – if it is not annealed it will retain many of its thermal stresses and significantly reduce its overall strength.

What is Toughened Glass?
Toughened glass is glass heated to beyond its annealing point and then the outside is rapidly and artificially cooled usually by jets of cool air.
This makes the toughened more resistant to impact. The downside to this is that because toughened glass has more unity in its tensile strength it would be more likely to explode completely if enough force was applied. This is sometimes a security concern since once a toughened glass window is breached there are no glass shards to discourage entry.

What is Laminated Glass?
Laminated glass has the same strength as ordinary glass but it consists of two pieces of glass containing a sandwich of plastic interlayer. If the glass does get broken the interlayer holds the whole piece in place so there is no hole left in the window for an intruder to get in through and no large loose shards of glass that can cut.

Do I Need to Install Safety Glass?
Safety glass is a legal requirement if used in low level glazing or glazing in and around doors. The specific requirements are for any area where any part of the glass is below 800mm from floor level or, in the case of doors (or within 300mm of a door), any area where any part of the glass is below 1500mm from floor level. Any glazing meeting this criteria will need to be safety glass.

Do You Fit Energy Saving Glass?
Energy saving glass is now used in all new frames. The regulations for replacement glazing are that, if the existing damaged glass is energy saving, then we will only replace it with energy saving glass (i.e. Like for Like). If the existing glazing is not energy saving, then you have the choice of replacing either as original or with energy saving glass.

Do I Have a Choice of Patterned Glass?
We stock the full range of Pilkington patterned glasses of which there are currently eighteen to choose from.
We can match with existing glass as long as it is still currently available.
Please request a free pattern book should you require one.