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Shower enclosures for domestic use are covered by BS EN 14428, Shower enclosures — Functional requirements and test methods, currently BS EN 14428:2015+A1:2018. It gives requirements, test methods, marking, labelling and evaluation of conformity, and its purpose is to ensure that an enclosure installed in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions performs satisfactorily when used as intended. It applies to shower enclosures for domestic purposes and does not cover shower cabinets or curtains, and it does not specify aesthetic or dimensional characteristics.

Approved Document K then applies as it does to any glazing. Its critical locations cover glazing in internal and external walls and doors at low level, and a shower enclosure is glazed from the tray upwards — so the question of whether a particular panel is in a critical location does not really arise, because all of it is. Requirement K4 is met by glazing that breaks safely, is robust, is in small panes, or is permanently protected by a screen, and in a shower only the first route is realistic.

Safe breakage is defined by reference to BS EN 12600 and BS 6206. Approved Document K describes a safe breakage as one that creates a small clear opening only, with detached particles no larger than the specified maximum size; or disintegration with small detached particles; or broken glazing in separate pieces that are not sharp or pointed. Toughened glass takes the second of those routes: it disintegrates into blunt granules rather than shards, which is precisely why it is used in bathrooms and why a failure, though startling, rarely causes a serious cut.

Toughened glass occasionally breaks with no impact at all, sometimes years after it was fitted, and the usual cause is a tiny nickel sulphide inclusion trapped in the glass during manufacture. The inclusion slowly changes phase and expands, and because a toughened pane is under high internal tension, a large enough inclusion in the wrong place is sufficient to release the whole pane. BS EN 14179-1 acknowledges this directly, stating that heat soaked thermally toughened soda lime silicate safety glass has safer breakage behaviour than annealed glass but also has a known level of residual risk of spontaneous breakage arising from the possible presence of critical nickel sulphide inclusions.

Heat soaking is the industry's answer. After toughening, the glass is put through a further oven cycle: the standard specifies that the holding phase commences when the surface temperature of all the glasses has reached 280°C, that the duration of the holding phase is two hours, and that the glass surface temperature must be maintained in the range of 290°C ± 10°C during it. The point is to make panes containing critical inclusions fail in the oven rather than in a bathroom.

It reduces the risk rather than eliminating it, and the standard is candid about that. It defines the level of residual risk as the risk of spontaneous breakage, on a statistical basis, being no more than one breakage per 400 tonnes of heat soaked glass, and notes that these quantities are dealt with statistically so it is impossible to select a quantity of glass for a building and claim that no break by nickel sulphide inclusion can occur. The standard also says that where the glass is used to offer protection under accidental human impact it should additionally be classified according to BS EN 12600.

An enclosure leaks at the bottom far more often than at the sides, and the cause is usually the tray or floor rather than the glass. The tray has to be fully supported and dead level in the correct plane, or the door will not sit square and water will run to the wrong corner. On a wet room floor the fall has to take water away from the threshold rather than towards it. Getting this right happens before the glass arrives, and cannot be corrected with sealant afterwards.

The wall fixings are the second decision. Frameless and semi-frameless panels put real load into the wall, and tile over plasterboard is not the same substrate as tile over masonry. A fixing that pulls out slowly over a year shows first as a door that stops closing cleanly, and by then the panel has been moving against its seals for months. Ask what the fixings are and what they are going into.

Sealing is a discipline, not a quantity. Silicone belongs on the outside of the enclosure at the tray junction and behind the wall profiles, not smeared along the inside of every joint, because internal beads trap water in the enclosure instead of letting it drain back into the tray. A sanitary-grade silicone with a fungicide is the right material, and the joint needs to be given the full curing time before the shower is used — which on most products means leaving it overnight rather than an hour.

Toughened glass fails all at once and loudly, and the enclosure will often hold most of the granules in place in a sagging sheet until it is disturbed. Keep people out of the bathroom, and do not try to lift the panel out as a unit — it is no longer a panel and will release its fragments as it moves. Photograph it before anything is cleared, because the manufacturer will want to see the break pattern and the origin point if a warranty claim follows.

Clear-up takes longer than people expect. Granules travel across the room, sit in the tray waste, lodge in the gap between tray and floor, and get into towels and bath mats. Go through the room methodically with gloves and a vacuum, lift and shake soft items outdoors, and check the waste trap before running the shower again. A single granule in a tray outlet is enough to hold the seal open.

Then ask the supplier two questions and put them in writing: whether the panels were heat soaked, and what the warranty says about spontaneous breakage. BS EN 14179-1 is clear that heat soaking reduces the residual risk to a stated statistical level rather than removing it, so a spontaneous failure is not in itself proof of a defective product — but it is a reasonable moment to establish what was supplied and to specify heat soaked glass for the replacement.