Wood stove glass breakage..

[cmonSTART]

Ok, here is something I've really wondered about. Just how prone to breaking is the glass in my Englander 12FP? As I understand it, it's actually a clear ceramic so it can tolerate high heat. I worry about a piece of wood falling into it and breaking it, or a burning log coming to rest against it and the heat cracking the glass. It's never happened, but I don't want to burn down the house when I'm not around. Just how durable is this stuff?

 

[begreen]

It's tough stuff. Usually it takes a serious human mistake to break.

For instance if the log was frozen solid and tossed into a hot stove and it pressed against the ceramic, then maybe?

 

[JohnnyBravo]

yea no worries. just dont close the door on a 20" split in an 18" deep stove.

 

[DriftWood]

All glass door stoves have to withstand a 3lb steel ball dropped from waist high. and suffer no damage from impact. If they di when being tested they fail costing the company more than 20k for re testing. As you can imagine, that is quite an impact, only human error usually causes any breakage

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/11677/

 

[Gooserider]

I haven't seen, but also have been told of demos where they put a cutting torch on one side of a hunk of stove glass while pouring icewater on the other with out effect... As said, it is impressively tough stuff. It does need to be installed properly (VC told us that in order to pass that falling ball test Elk described, they had to do a lot of engineering on the gaskets and mounting clips in order to avoid putting stresses on the panes) but the reports I've seen of breakage were generally accompanied by admissions of "operator error" such as slamming the door on a stub of wood sticking out, or attempting to use the door to lever a 20.5" long split into a 20" length stove...

IMHO, there are plenty of things to worry about when installing and using a wood stove, but glass failure isn't very high on the list...

Gooserider