Shower screen shattered spontaneously

We had that happen to our conservatory roof during a heatwave several years ago. It broke into little round pieces so obviously safety glass. We had it replaced with polycarbonate!

The heat can cause glass to shatter.
A neighbours car window did just that and the aa said it is the heat of the sun.
We caught it on CCTV and the AA were spot on.
Also,never pull blackout curtains across/down as that too can cause windows to implode.

This happened two weeks ago at my son's house, he had been out of the shower half an hour previously! Was downstairs and heard " a massive explosion" he said it was like plane hitting the house. He ran upstairs to find a pane of the walk in shower smashed and the small pieces of glass had shot all over the bathroom!!!

Never a shower screen but a glass worktop saver shattered into tiny pieces all over the bench and into food that was cooling. It went so far that it was across the room. I was not near it luckily but could not move for shards DH had to clear it up. We now have plastic ones.

I’ve just remembered we also once had a tempered glass screen that came down over a range cooker.
That spontaneously combusted too!

Hi, I thought that showers were made of safety glass so that if anything broke they wouldnt disintegrate into jaggy pieces? I just had a new shower door fitted last year and assumed because it was safety glass that this is what was meant, but reading these I may have mis understood what safety glass actually is.

It is like a lot of things, some people try to fob people off with "oh it's very rare", but if it never happened at all it would not be documented at all.

Even if it is very rare, that means it can happen and if it happens to someone it is not rare in that person's experience.

Gold star to those bathroom fitters. Their concerns might have saved someone's life.

Thanks for the shamrock crazyH, how did you know that I’m Irish?

Thankfully not happened to me (knock on wood) but it happened to a friend of ours who was dog sitting for another of our friends. It exploded and my poor friend fell and slipped from the fright of it shattering, and was banged and cut up. Really shook her poor thing, she is not easily shaken.

Fleur, it’s happens very rarely, we were advised that if we had it replaced to put a layer of cling film both sides so that it would be held in place and not shatter. However we now have a shower curtain instead.

When my cousin had her bath replaced with a shower the people doing it would not fit a glass screen because they did not consider them safe enough and they put fittings for a curtain. That made me think and when we put in our last shower we also put in a curtain. But curtains also have the benefit of not having fiddly bits along the bottom which are a pain to clean.

wow - we have a massive shower screen in the new bathroom. Hope this does not happen- although insurance would cover it.

What if it happens when the shower is being used?

We had the same happen with the shower screen while I was in the bathroom.The paramedics said it looked like a road traffic accident.Lots of tiny bits of glass had to be cut out of my legs.We have a shower curtain now!not as fancy but will never have a shower screen again.

I've got one of those, thanks, I'll be alert.

I had heard of glass tv stands doing this.

Mouseybrown60 - lucky no one was in the shower at the time ?

During the manufacturing of toughened glass microscopic pebbles (called nickel sulfide inclusions) can sometimes be trapped inside the glass. As the glass and pebbles expand and contract with the heat in the bathroom the pebbles can weaken the glass causing it to explode.

Terrifying, no matter what the reason.

My niece experienced her glass cooker hood exploding into pieces. She’d just left the room with her baby.

Yes, we heard an enormous explosion and ran upstairs to find the shower screen in our sons bathroom in a million pieces, our son slept through it!

Yes we had that happen when one of the new windows in the conservatory just shattered. Thankfully we were not in there at the time, it was right next to the chair I normally sit in! The installation company dealt with it immediately and we had no further problems.

That happened to us on Holiday in a Hotel in Turkey.
There was a big Thunderstorm, returning to our room to find Glass everywhere, shower cubicle beyond any help..must have made quite a noise? Completely destroyed.
Apparently they told us it was something to do with Air pressure?
Never heard of this before.