Glass Balustrade Shattered only 2 years after installation- Advice needed

riva

I'm hoping that someone can advice me here.

We had around 25k worth of glass installed in a major renovation.Nice quality, gorgeous glass with a company that was capable of doing single 6m wide sheets (or rather 2 sandwiched sheets to look like one)- this is just to give you an idea of the quality.

Anyway, 2 years down and one night (middle of the night presumably) one balustrade sheet shattered (one glass of the 2 pieces sandwiched). This happened overnight- no obvious reason. Its in an area where we never need to hold it and don't really need to touch it (although that shouldn't make a difference as its a balustrade and meant to be held). I have 2 very girly girls ie no balls or rough play in the house. So basically, I can't think of why it should shatter esp as it happened in August- warm weather.

Called up the company in panic as some bits came off and both my daughter and I bled from stepping on it. They sent someone to assess it after a lot of chasing up (4-5 weeks). Then waited another 4-5 weeks and I finally managed to get through today. Naturally they won't take responsibility.

It states in their T&C that there's a 5 year warranty against glass defect which is what I believe this to be. It seem now that its up to me to prove this- hugely unfair.

What are my rights here? I feel that if I'd agreed to pay for it from the start- as they very quickly suggested I do with my insurers- this would have been solved within weeks. Its now over 2 months.

This is their advice to me straight away:
1. The glass is designed so that if one skin of glass shatters the glass will remain in-situ and will, in the short term, be perfectly safe to use.

2. You have taken the right action by applying some clingfilm to prevent granules of glass escaping.

3. The glass will need to be replaced at some point, but sooner rather than later as there now no redundancy left in the panel if the other skin were to fail.

4. You will need to advise your insurers of the breakage and we will provide them with a quotation to replace the panel.

bris

I could have been an outside influence, you have no idea if something hit it or not as it's the reasonable explanation.


To claim from them you will need someone with expert knowledge to actually be able to blame the glass, something which would be very difficult to do.


You could also try and find out the fail rate of this glass, if it's a common fault there will be others with the same problem, if not you have to just put it down to an unexplained mystery and get the insurers involved.

Owain_Moneysaver

"Spontaneous" shattering of toughened glass is well known and is a result of the stresses caused by the heat-toughening process.

If the glass is 2 years old it's unlikely to be a manufacturing or installation defect, which would reveal itself within a few weeks. It's possible the glass was damaged in your house several weeks ago but has only just shattered, hence apparently 'spontaneously'.

http://www.precisionglass.com/tech/tgb.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

wealdroam

riva wrote: »

It states in their T&C that there's a 5 year warranty against glass defect which is what I believe this to be. It seem now that its up to me to prove this- hugely unfair.

Why is that unfair?

You are the one making the claim that the glass is faulty, so it is up to you to substantiate that claim.

riva

So does that mean that every time I want to use glass, its a risk I simply have to take as there's no way I can prove or disprove whether its a defect within the glass? Hence, their warranty is really not of any good because if they could simply claim that its not their fault (even if it is as how would I disprove it?).
Thanks for the responses, its very helpful.

sinizterguy

Since it's 2 years since install, it seems entirely fair that you need to prove that they did something wrong.

neilmcl

Will you house insurance cover this?

InsideInsurance

Same as any warranty yes.

You need to get the root cause investigated by an appropriate engineer. If you say its a manufacturing issue then this wont be covered by your Home insurance as product defect and workmanship issues are both excluded.

It'd be prudent to not mention it to your insurers until the cause has been established. If it is accidental damage then Home insurance may cover it if you have AD cover. If its a fitting or manufacturing defect then you'd have the warranty or a claim against the fitters.

One the glass walls to our meeting room shattered last month when no one was in it, it'd been up for about 9 months but in that case all layers failed and a 8' by 5' sheet of glass ended up as small cubes on the floor. I know Facilities were having a lot of people up to investigate why it failed as it wasnt a cheap thing to replace.

pinkshoes

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

"Spontaneous" shattering of toughened glass is well known and is a result of the stresses caused by the heat-toughening process.

If the glass is 2 years old it's unlikely to be a manufacturing or installation defect, which would reveal itself within a few weeks. It's possible the glass was damaged in your house several weeks ago but has only just shattered, hence apparently 'spontaneously'.

http://www.precisionglass.com/tech/tgb.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

Not necessarily.

We had a velux window crack after a couple of years, and we knew nothing had hit it. It was inspected by velux, and as there were no chips to indicate it had been hit (glass should withstand quite a knock without breaking, there is usually some sort of evidence of impact, although this could be hard to find on a large sheet of glass!). Velux accepted it had cracked due to stress from being fitted badly, and replaced it free of charge.

riva

Bumping this again as I found it really hard to deal with so have not looked at it for some days. There's an obvious area where the glass started to shatter as evidenced by cracks radiating from that point- its about 1.5 inches from the top edge- no chips/dislodged glass. Bits of glass that came off were from the edges.
They are simply ignoring us. The guy I spoke to said that he will send me information regarding how this could happen and never did. I think I'm just so stunned at their behaviour.
I don't think its installation but believe it may be a defect in the glass, the guy himself said that its possible if there's the tiniest bubble. What's the warranty for? As far as I'm concerned, it seems like its a win-win situation for them as if the onus is on us to prove it- very hard and costly- even if it is the glass, there is no incentive for them to admit to it. Plus I suspect I'll have to go back to them as its a bespoke piece and its riskier to use another person in case it looks different.
Opinions?

hollydays

Do they belong to any trade associations?
I found a different companies site and there seems to be quite a lot of information on there. At the bottom of the page are logos of various trade associations. Perhaps you could ring them and ask advice?
http://www.guardianglass.co.uk/industry/