Glass Repair near you

Tell the glazier what broke, where it is and roughly how big it is. A photo of the whole piece, plus a close-up of any marking in a corner of the glass, helps them bring the right material on the first visit.

Annealed glass is ordinary flat glass, cooled slowly so it can be cut. It breaks into long, sharp shards, which is why codes keep it out of doors and other spots where people might fall against it, but it is also the type a glazier can often cut on the spot, so a single-pane sash or a picture frame can be fixed quickly.

Tempered glass is heat-treated so that it crumbles into small granules when it breaks. It can't be cut or drilled afterwards, so each piece is made at its final size, with any holes for hinges or handles made before tempering. Laminated glass bonds layers of glass to a plastic interlayer, and Natural Resources Canada notes that lamination makes glass more shatter-resistant; a cracked laminated pane tends to stay in its frame. Wired glass, with a metal mesh inside, still turns up in some older doors.

Replacement glass has to meet the rules for its location. Part 9 of the National Building Code, as reproduced in British Columbia's Building Code, requires tempered or laminated safety glass meeting CAN/CGSB-12.1, or wired glass meeting CAN/CGSB-12.11, in glass sidelights more than 500 mm wide that could be mistaken for doors, in storm doors, and in sliding doors within or at every entrance to a dwelling unit. Glass in other entrance doors to a dwelling unit must be safety or wired glass where its area exceeds 0.5 m² and it extends to less than 900 mm from the bottom of the door.

The same section allows mirrored glass doors only at the entrance to clothes closets, built to their own CGSB standard, and rules out anything but safety glass in shower and bathtub enclosures. Provinces adopt the national code with their own changes, so the glazier should confirm the local version before ordering. In Quebec, contractors doing door and window work for others need a Régie du bâtiment du Québec licence, where subclass 8.0 covers doors and windows.

A broken window or door can't wait for a new pane to be fabricated, so an emergency glazier makes the opening safe first and returns with the glass later. After a break-in, report it to the police before cleaning up if anything was taken.

Glass isn't measured from the broken piece. Part of every pane sits hidden in the frame's rebate, so the glazier removes the stops or the old putty, measures the opening and allows the clearance the frame needs. Tempered glass leaves no room for error, since it can't be trimmed afterwards.

Not every break has a visible cause. Glass heated unevenly, for example a pane half in sun and half shaded by an overhang, or with heavy curtains or a dark object trapping heat against it, can develop a thermal stress crack that usually starts at the edge and runs inward. Chipped or damaged edges make it more likely. Tempered glass can also shatter without warning on rare occasions, often traced to a hidden flaw or an edge knocked during handling.

A crack that begins at the edge with no point of impact is worth pointing out to the glazier and, for a newer window, to the manufacturer, since a glass warranty may treat it differently from impact damage.

A repair is a good moment to improve on the original. Natural Resources Canada notes that low-e coatings reduce heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer. Most low-e coatings are designed to sit sealed inside an insulating unit, while harder coatings made for exposed surfaces suit single panes such as storm window inserts.