Wired Glass
Wired glass is made up of criscrossed wires of diamond or squares inside the glass. They are generally used in fire-exit doors and sometimes even glass for shopfronts or even windows.
Wired Glass as a Safety Glass
After being considering as a safety glass, the market has slowly seen wired glass has been causing many injuries especially in schools in the United States. This resulted in many litigation cases.
While it may seem at first appearance that the wires inside the glass reinforce the compression strength of the glass, wired glass is only half as strong as ordinary annealed glass. The wires inside the glass act as discontinuity making the glass weaker than annealed glass of the same thickness.
Wired Glass as a Fire-rated Glass
In the past, installers or fabricators have no choice but to swallow the trade-off between safety and the fire-resistant benefits that wired glass provides. Wired had regarded as a fire-rated glass because when the wired glass gets exposed to fire, the glass shards will be retained by the wires, which will inhibit the passage of fire.
However, due to continuous development in the fire-rated glass market segment, we no longer have no sacrifice having low impact safety protection for fire-resistant benefits. There are now glass solutions that can provide both fire-resistant benefits that are impact resistant as well.
The Solution
When we talk about fire-resistant glass, we should note that the safest feature in this hierarchy of fire-resistant solutions is using a laminated glass with a clear intumescent interlayer which act as heat-opaque barrier. In the event of fire, this intumescent interlayer will expand and turn rigid, opaque and heat-absorbent fire shield. There are many glass suppliers that provide fire-resistant glazing solutions such as St Gobain, Pilkington and others. Chain Glass can assist in providing these product range to our customers as well.