All Windows for Sale at The Board Store Home Improvements in La Crosse, WI, Feature Optional Tempered Glass
At The Board Store Home Improvements in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the windows that we have the option of adding tempered glass, which is approximately four times stronger than regular, or annealed, glass. Also sometimes referred to as safety glass, it is required by current residential building codes in several locations such as bathrooms, stair landings, and adjacent to entry doors. Tempered glass is any type of glass that has been strengthened through a thermal or chemical process. Unlike ordinary glass that can shatter into pointy shards and create a significant safety hazard, thermally or chemically treated glass crumbles into small granules that are a lot less likely to cause injury.
Buying windows with tempered glass provides added safety for your home in La Crosse, WI. For those who might be curious, here is one way in which a tempered window pane is made:
- A piece of ordinary glass is cut to the desired size.
- Any imperfections that can be identified in the glass are removed prior to tempering.
- The glass then travels through a tempering oven where it is heated to above 600 degree Celsius.
- A high-pressure cooling process called quenching comes next. In essence, quenching causes the surfaces of the glass to cool down more quickly than the center. As the center subsequently cools, it forces the outer surfaces into a state call compression, which is what gives tempered glass its strength. Glass that has undergone a tempering process will break at around 24,000 pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure, while normal glass will break at just 6,000 psi – a significant difference.
For more information about tempered glass and the replacement windows that we carry, contact The Board Store Home Improvements today. Or, stop by our showroom in La Crosse, WI, at 524 Copeland Avenue.
