Are glass internal doors safe?
Adding internal glass doors throughout a home, allows light to flood into your space and is a useful way to make a smaller space feel bigger. The good news is that glass doors in Australia need to satisfy relevant safety standards. Choosing the right glass can have a significant impact on the comfort of your home, so it is important to understand the different glass options available to you.
The doors we purchase at Doors Apart must comply with Australian Standard AS1288 (Glass in buildings- Selection and Installation). This standard is primarily concerned with ensuring that the selection of glass in buildings is safe and uniform.
What glass options are available?
Toughened or safety glass has gone through a process where it is heated to more than 600 degrees and then rapidly cooled. This procedure has a toughening effect on the glass, ensuring that if it is broken it will crumble into small granular chunks, instead of splintering into jagged shards that can cause injury. Toughened glass is four to five times stronger than annealed or float glass of the same thickness.
Laminated glass is constructed by bonding two pieces of glass between an interlay such as Poly Vinyl Butyral (PVB) or Ethyl Vinyl Acetate (EVA). In the event of glass breaking, the pieces will stick to the film, leading to greater safety and security. This is a more expensive option, and is used for fire glass, where the interlayer can also act as an intumescent.
Laminated glass is your best option for security in your home and generally takes two blows to break it and several more to create a hole.
Annealed or Float Glass is the term for ‘standard glass’ and can be used in doors where the area of an individual pane does not exceed 0.26m2 or is less than 300mm wide. Annealed glass is typically found in traditional leadlight panels, where the small pieces do not need to be toughened. Annealed glass tends to break into long, jagged shards which can cause significant injury. It is therefore prudent to use toughened or laminated safety glass in high traffic areas, to reduce the risks that result if such a pane is broken.
If you are considering the best glass option for your door system, some of the main features to look at include the strength, cost and the intended purpose for the glass installation. Feel free to call us today if you have any questions regarding the options available to you.