Want to feel good after getting hammered? Safety glass is the answer.
If you think dealing with broken glass is a pain, spare a thought for the U.S. Consulate General Sydney - it’s had several large, street-facing glass panels at its North Sydney location smashed over the last 12 months, the last incident due to a person armed with a hammer cracking a grand total of 10 panels.
Luckily for the Consulate, those panels were made of safety glass - a specific type of glass that is far less likely to break, and far less likely to create a dangerous hazard if it is broken.
There are two main types of safety glass:
Laminated glass, which has a layer of laminated plastic placed in between the glass panes. This prevents the glass from shattering, and when broken, looks a bit like a spider’s web. The thickness and colour of the glass can also reduce the transmission of solar energy and UV radiation, as well as control glare. For older windows that need to be upgraded to meet Australian standards, or for added security for existing safety glass, a clear plastic film can be adhered to the internal face of the glass panel, ensuring the glass will hold together in the event of a breakage.
Toughened (or ‘tempered’) glass, which is cut specifically to size before being placed in a heat furnace and then cooled rapidly – a process that makes it four or five times tougher than regular glass. Unlike laminated glass, it can shatter, but it shatters into far less hazardous small cubes.
Another stroke of luck for the good folk at the Consulate is the fact that the expert glaziers at Express Glass are on call 24-7 to repair and replace glass breakages if, for instance, someone decides to do some serious damage with a common household tool.
A team of four Express Glass glaziers arrived on the scene at 7.30AM on a weekday, ready to replace the boarded-up, cracked panels. Although the standard method is to remove all the panels at once and then replace them, the Consulate team were understandably not keen on having too much of the building’s interior exposed, so the decision was made to replace the individual panels one by one.
Michael, one of the Express Glass glaziers on site, says the panels were 10.38 laminate safety glass that weigh just over 100kg each, and that it took between 20 and 30 minutes to replace each panel.
“We used 6.38 laminate on the door panels though, as the glass there needed to be lighter,” Michael tells me. “If the glass is too heavy, the door hinges will stretch and sag over time. The solution is to use lighter glass, or to upgrade to stronger hinges.”
Once bollards and safety tape were used to cordon off the area, boards were removed from the damaged glass, and the Express Glass team manoeuvred huge glass panels across a busy city street - an impressive feat that looked like a real-life version of the classic video game Frogger.
The Express Glass glazers methodically removed the cracked panels using suction cups and a whole lot of manpower, and before long the brand-new panels of safety glass were installed, leaving the Consulate looking brand spanking new after an unfortunate night of getting hammered.
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