A broken window is one of the few glazing problems that can’t wait. Whether it’s a stone off a mower, a football, a slammed door in a gale or a break-in, you’ve suddenly got a hole in the outside of your house and probably glass on the floor.
This one’s less about diagnosis and more about what to do in what order. So here it is in that order.
Right now: make it safe
Before you think about repairs, deal with the glass itself.
Keep children and pets well out of the room until it’s cleared. If a pane has cracked but is still in place, leave it alone rather than picking at it, because a cracked pane is under tension and can let go without warning. If glass has already fallen, wear proper gloves and stout shoes, pick up the big pieces first, then vacuum the area thoroughly and go over it again the next day. Tiny fragments travel a long way and turn up days later.
If the glass is toughened, and most modern low-level glazing and door glass is, it won’t be in shards. It shatters into thousands of small blunt pieces, which is exactly what it’s designed to do. It looks alarming and makes a spectacular mess, but it’s far less likely to cut you badly than a sheet of old float glass breaking into daggers.
Then: get the opening covered
If the pane is gone completely, or is so badly broken it’s going to fall, the opening needs boarding. Weather and security are both reasons not to leave it overnight. We can board an opening up quickly so the house is secure and dry, then come back with the made-to-measure glass once it’s ready.
If you’re waiting on us and want to do something in the meantime, heavy-duty polythene taped firmly all the way round on the inside will keep the worst of the weather out, but treat it as a stopgap, not security. Don’t try to remove a broken sealed unit yourself. Getting glass out of a uPVC frame involves taking the beading out in the right order, and a unit that’s already broken is unpredictable when it moves.
The insurance question
Worth thinking about early, because it affects what you do next. Accidental glass breakage is covered by many home insurance policies, and damage from an attempted break-in almost always is. Two things help if you’re going to claim: photograph the damage before anything is boarded or cleared, and if it was a break-in, report it to the police and note the incident number, because insurers usually ask for it.
Whether it’s worth claiming is a different question. On a single pane the excess on the policy is often more than the repair costs, in which case people simply pay for it and leave the policy alone. We can tell you what the glass will cost so you can weigh that up before you phone anyone.
How the replacement actually works
The frame almost never needs replacing. What comes out is the sealed unit, the double glazed panel itself, and what goes in is a new one made to match.
That means measuring the opening precisely, then ordering a unit to match what was there: the same overall thickness, the same glass specification, and the same appearance. That last part matters more than people expect, because there are so many variations. Plain, obscured or patterned for a bathroom, Georgian bars, leaded designs, toughened where building regulations require it, low emissivity coatings for energy efficiency. Getting an exact match is why replacement glass is made to order rather than pulled off a shelf, and why there’s normally a short wait between measuring and fitting.
Fitting itself is quick. The beads come out, the broken unit comes out, the new unit is bedded in on packers so it sits square and takes the weight properly, and the beading goes back. Under an hour in most cases, and the room’s usable again straight away.
Where safety glass is required
If the pane that’s broken is in a door, in a side panel next to a door, or low down in a window near floor level, it very likely needs to be replaced with toughened or laminated safety glass. That isn’t an upsell, it’s building regulations, and it’s there because those are the panes people walk into and fall against. Any decent glazier will specify safety glass in those positions as a matter of course.
A crack that isn’t an impact
One thing worth mentioning. Now and then a pane cracks with nothing having hit it, often a long curving crack starting at the edge. That’s usually a thermal crack, caused by one part of the glass heating fast while another part stays in shade, and it happens most on partly shaded south-facing windows, sometimes where something dark has been left up against the glass inside. The fix is the same, a new unit, but it’s worth knowing nobody put a ball through it.
If you’ve got a broken window now
We replace broken and cracked glass right across Wishaw and Lanarkshire, we can board up an opening to make you secure the same day, and there’s no call-out charge.
Send a photo of the damage on WhatsApp, including a shot of the whole window from a step back so we can see the style and size, and we’ll tell you what it needs and how quickly we can have the glass. Or just call us on 01698 604 278 and we’ll take it from there.
Broken glass is the job we try hardest to get to quickly. If you are in Bellshill or nearby, ring rather than message.
Broken glass in a double glazed window means the whole sealed unit gets remade, which is a straightforward glass unit replacement.
Related advice
There are before and after photographs of jobs like this in the gallery. Photographs on WhatsApp are the quickest route to an answer. Contact us here.
Browse the rest of our window and door advice for around fifty guides on common window and door problems.
Written by the team at Wishaw Window Repairs. Over thirty years repairing uPVC windows and doors across Lanarkshire.