Most break-ins through a patio door are not sophisticated — and neither are the ones that happen with somebody home. The back of a house is usually very vulnerable to break-ins and can be overlooked. A patio door is a faster way for illegal entry; mostly glass, with ordinary tempered glass which fails all at once — one strike with a blunt object and the whole pane drops out as harmless pebbles, leaving a clear opening and almost no noise after the first crack.
Laminated glass is built to fail differently. Two panes are bonded to a clear plastic interlayer, so when the glass is struck and breaks, the fragments stay stuck to that layer and the pane stays in the frame. It still breaks, but the glass stays in place within the frame, making a break-in a lot more difficult and time-consuming.
Both are safety glazing and both are far stronger than ordinary glass. They are built for two different jobs, and it is worth knowing which one you have.
| Tempered | Laminated | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A single pane, heat-treated so the surface is in compression. | Two panes bonded to a clear plastic interlayer, like a car windscreen. |
| When it breaks | The whole pane lets go at once into small blunt pebbles. | It cracks, but the pieces stay stuck to the interlayer. |
| What it protects | People. Blunt fragments instead of long shards. | People, and the opening. The pane stays in the frame. |
| Against forced entry | One strike clears the opening. | Repeated, loud, visible effort to get through — the point is the delay. |
| Also does | — | Cuts noise and blocks almost all UV, so furnishings fade less. |
Standard on almost every patio door sold today is tempered. Laminated is an option you have to ask for.
Forced entry through a patio door is quick because it is quiet. Laminated glass turns one strike into sustained, obvious noise at the back of a house — and most attempts stop there. That is the honest claim: not that it cannot be beaten, but that beating it is slow and conspicuous.
The interlayer that holds a broken pane together also damps sound. If you are near a highway, a rail corridor or an approach path, this is the glass we would have specified anyway — the security is the part most people do not realize they are also buying.
Laminated glazing blocks the overwhelming majority of ultraviolet light. Rugs, floors and upholstery in front of a big south-facing slider last considerably longer behind it.
On a slider the lock and the track are usually the weak point before the glass is. We fit an auxiliary foot lock in the track, check the panel cannot be lifted out of it, and make sure the frame is anchored into solid framing rather than shims. Laminated glass in a badly fitted door protects very little.
Andersen builds an impact-resistant option, Stormwatch®, for coastal homes that have to take wind-borne debris. It is laminated glass engineered and tested to a different standard, offered on the A-Series and E-Series, and it is what a building department will be asking about in a coastal wind zone.
For most of our area it is more than the job needs, and we will say so. Where it is required, it is not optional and we specify it.
Andersen offers laminated glass across their window and patio door lines, described in their own words as giving "added strength, enhanced security and sound control" and resisting "impact, forced entry and unwanted noise". Which models and sizes it is available on changes, so we confirm it against current Andersen documentation for your exact opening before anything is ordered — rather than promising it here and finding out later.
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Laminated security glass stays in the frame when it breaks. If the glass is being replaced anyway, this will be the most economical moment it will ever be to upgrade your safety.
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