Shattered Conservatory Roof within Gaureentee Period

steviebb

A inner pane of our Conservatory roof shattered into a million pieces. The roof is under 6 months old and still within its gaurentee period.

The window company say they will replace the roof segment without issue. When the window shattered it also damaged the laminate floor below. The window company say they are not liable for this.

Is this correct?

Thanks for any advise….

Aylesbury_Duck

What do the guarantee terms and conditions say about consequential losses?

What is the damage? Some scratches on a section of laminate floor?

steviebb

I will need to check. Yes, Dents and scratch marks.

Aylesbury_Duck

The guarantee may not cover consequential losses (there's no obligation for it to do so) but you may be able to claim for them under consumer rights. If it was installed less than six months ago you could ask the installer for the replacement unit under your consumer rights, plus the cost of sorting out the floor.

If it's laminate floor, it's usually straightforward to just remove a section and replace it, and isn't too costly. Get a quote from a local flooring company and go back to the conservatory installer and ask them to cover it.

Boohoo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665342/shattered-conservatory-roof-within-gaureentee-period

I can't see how minute tiny pieces of glass could cause dents and scratches to your tough laminate flooring.

The glass should be toughened glass and will break into very tiny parts.

Any photos of the damage and do you know how this roof glass shattered?

steviebb

I don't either but it did. I wanst there and do not know how these things shatter when they do. But there is a definate area where the glass came down and caused damaged. But been speaking with the Conservatory company tonight and it looks like they will cover the floor as well. As I said to them… What if we were sitting there at the time? That glass is bloody thick.

Aylesbury_Duck

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974017#Comment_81974017

You would have been fine if it shattered in situ. As pointed out by Boohoo, it's designed such that in the event of breakage, it shatters into tiny pieces. You'd have some glass beads in your hair, that's all.

If the whole pane fell out and broke on impact with the floor, that would be more dangerous if you were under it, but you weren't.

TELLIT01

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81973974#Comment_81973974

When one of the glass panels in our conservatory roof was smashed the glass took chunks out of the wooden conservatory furniture. I dread to think what the result would have been if we had been out there.

I assumed the same as most people here, that there would be no sharp edges - I was very wrong.

Boohoo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81974196#Comment_81974196

If it was toughened glass it shouldn't happen like that.

If it was normal glass then yes shards of glass would fall down.

I worked in double glazing for over 10 years and most of it was in the warehouse loading windows and doors plus sealed units and the toughened units were ok untill you caught the edge on something and they go bang and if you were lucky you could place the unit back on the trolley before the broken unit would breakdown.

Normal float glass units were different and would break into shards and cause injury.

We were sometimes called out to replace conservatory units that had broken but I never saw one that caused damage like the OP said and yourself but it doesn't mean It may cause damage.

MyRealNameToo

In a prior office we had a lot of fishbowl style offices and meeting rooms (ie in the middle of the office floor with all 4 sides being glass, it was a US domiciled company so offices were much more common. About 7 years after the office had been refitted one day a random office wall exploded into millions of pieces and half of them cascaded to the floor. No one was in the office or even near by it.

I was surprised that the cubes of glass were still fairly sharp on the edges and that combined with the weight of the glass could certainly do some damage… clearly not as bad as a long shard of glass could be but certainly not 100% safe either.

By the next morning all the glass walls in the building had layers of plastic stuck to them. They never definitely worked out what caused it to go, the assumption was that the frame was slightly off true and it has just given under the long term stress. They ended up replacing them all with some laminated glass at a crazy price as the secondary plastic coating that had been put on looked bad. Dont know if they claimed from their insurance for it, certainly a year later when builders set fire to the building they became a little unstuck as they discovered they were the insurers of the builders so any action against them would only result in the £1,000 excess being paid to them 😆

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Within the first 6 months it is taken that the goods do not conform unless demonstrated otherwise.

I would get the glass replaced with as little hard feeling as possible but would note you are not claiming on the warranty but exercising your right to a remedy under the Consumer Rights Act.

Once replaced seek a claim for damages, as far as I am aware, it would be taken the glass was "faulty" but burden of proof (on the balance of probability) that it was the glass that damaged the floor would be upon yourself.

How old is the laminate may be a question, if as old as the roof then that's a small portion of it's lifespan, if 10 years old it may not have much value.