Spontaneous pano window shatter

[CanoeStream]

It has been a long, long winter with the most April snows in a lifetime. Lowest winter temperatures have not been extraordinarily cold. I retrieved my Safari from secure, private storage today. Our Safari is kept in its own garage to which only I have a key. It was put away intact last fall. And this is what I found this morning with the roadside aft pano window:



I verified that tempered glass chips were found at the storage location; ie, nothing happened on the short tow home. Nothing had penetrated the exterior of our storage garage.

Thanks to Shorewood RV, the regional Airstream dealer, for getting me in on short notice but I'm all taped ready to head there tomorrow morning.



These window units are glued into place inside the outside frame. Very little rigid structure holds them tight. Has anybody else experienced spontaneous failure of recent designed pano windows? What were the conditions at the time?

[Aage]

Just came across this post, Bob.

Sure is a mystery! Did you ever find out more on the 'why'? Did your insurance cover the costs?

[Harp]

Had the same thing happen to the side window on our Argosy. Caught it on our game camera. One minute window good the next shattered with no indication of a strike point the window shattered but stayed intact. I have heard of excessive heat build up causing this and I think this was our case. Kinda crazy.

[cwf]

I had it happen in a car once. Riding along on a cold heavy raining day...inside car was coming up to temp. Night before was cooling down.... So might have been expansion issue.

Anyway, it fractures the whole window as I was driving. I had rolled window down then up to clear outside a bit. Then pop!

I fugured it was the warm inside and cold outside and typical Louisiana road condition that. Just made the perfect storm.

Since glass is liquid, after many years, it gets thicker at the bottom. If the glue is also hard it might have pulled the glass just right and fractured. When you hitched then moved the flex could have set it off.

[NJtoNC]

i cant recall where i saw the post but i did see someone else post here with with a new trailer and a side window that shattered and was unexplained. if i recall they were traveling though.

[wahoonc]

Several possibilities, there have been a raft of car sun roof glass shattering incidents in this area back in early summer when we had the first really high heat. Most of the times it seems that it was due to a possible internal defect in the glass and the extreme heat build up causes uneven tension in the glass, if it is severe enough it will shatter.

Aaron

[carl2591]

tempered glass can just shatter from no apparent reason.. We get calls from people needing to replace glass in fireplace doors that have shattered during a fire and some times during summer..

that curved glass may be a bit more incline to breaking as it has a different stress on it.. could be when you parked the unit it had a slight twist and just right pressure and crack.

so i bet that is one expensive bit of glass and getting it installed to boot.. man what a bummer for sure.

[BigAl]

When glass is tempered it is heated and then allowed to cool. This creates a stress in the pane of glass and gives it the strength we want. If you scratch a tempered piece of glass it will eventually fail. That's what I was told by foreman at a tempering plant.
Al