Areas we cover across London

Where safety glass problems actually show up across London

Glazing problems follow the building stock. The pane that breaks in a Shoreditch shopfront and the pane that fails a survey in a Harrow semi are different products in different frames with different access problems, and anyone who talks about London as one market has not worked in it. This is what the job is actually like in the parts of the city we work in most.

High street shopfronts: Camden, Shoreditch, Brixton, Walthamstow, Wood Green

Shopfront glazing is the most abused glass in London and the most visible. Large panes, thin frames, heavy footfall, roller shutters and delivery trolleys. On Camden High Street, around Shoreditch High Street and Kingsland Road, down Brixton Road, along Walthamstow High Street and on Wood Green High Road, we are usually dealing with one of three things: a pane broken by impact or attempted entry, a pane cracked by thermal stress behind window vinyl or stacked stock, or a frontage being altered where the old glass turns out never to have been safety glass.

A3 units are their own category. Cafes and restaurants put menu boards, fridges, counters and signage against the inside of the glass, which traps heat and produces the classic edge crack running in at ninety degrees before curving away. We see it most on south and west facing frontages. Half the time the repair is a toughened replacement because the exposure justifies it. The other half, the pane cracked because somebody slid a chest freezer against it, and the sensible fix is an air gap.

For shops the real constraint is trading hours. A high street unit cannot have its frontage out at midday on a Saturday, and a food business often cannot close at all. So shopfront panes get measured during trading, boarded if needed, and glazed early morning or at the end of the day. On a run of frontage panes we also check distortion direction, because roller wave running in different directions on adjacent panes is extremely obvious on a shopfront viewed along the pavement.

Period conversions and HMOs: Islington, Hackney, Haringey, Newham

The Victorian and Edwardian terraces of Islington, Hackney, Harringay, Tottenham and across Newham were almost all split into flats, and the glazing that worries us is not the original sash windows. It is what the conversion added. Glazed partitions forming hallways, glazed internal doors on landings, part glazed doors to bedsits, and low level windows in stairwells that end up right where somebody falling down the stairs would hit them.

Most of that glass went in between the 1970s and the 1990s, before safety glazing requirements were enforced the way they are now, and a surprising amount of it is ordinary annealed glass with no mark anywhere. It stays invisible until an HMO licensing inspection, a letting agent check, a mortgage valuation or a sale. Then a landlord has a week to produce something that proves the glass is safe, and the only thing that proves it is a marked pane and a specification.

Practically, these are the jobs where we audit rather than replace. We walk the building, check the corner of every pane, measure cill heights, and give the landlord or managing agent a list split into glass that needs changing now and glass that is fine until it is disturbed. In a converted terrace that usually comes down to two or three door panels and a landing window rather than the whole building, which is a much easier conversation than the one the inspection started.

Post war flats and estates: Southwark, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets

The 1960s to 1980s blocks across Southwark, Lambeth, Bermondsey, Kennington, Bethnal Green and Poplar bring a particular set of problems. Full height glazing beside front doors, communal stair and corridor glazing, glazed screens to balconies and walkways, and metal framed openings where the glass is held in a way nobody makes any more. Breakages in communal areas are frequent and the glass is often in a position where falling fragments onto a walkway below rule out monolithic toughened glass entirely.

Access is the slow part, not the glazing. Blocks have estate management, concierge or caretaker arrangements, controlled entry, and lifts that will not take a 2 metre pane. A large pane often has to be carried up a stair, which changes what size we are willing to make and sometimes means splitting an opening differently. We establish all of that at survey stage, because finding it out on delivery day wastes everyone's morning. Communal glazing also usually needs the freeholder or managing agent to authorise the work, so we quote in a form an agent can put through their own process.

1930s semis in the outer boroughs: Harrow, Ealing, Barnet, Wembley

The interwar suburbs are where we find the most original glazed internal doors still in service. Harrow, Pinner, Ealing, Acton, Finchley, Barnet and our own patch around Wembley are full of 1930s semis with the original part glazed door between hall and kitchen, bevelled or patterned glass in a wooden frame, no mark, no safety class, and often a slight bow in the door that loads the pane every time it shuts.

Owners do not want to lose those doors and they do not have to. A toughened or laminated replacement can be made in obscure or patterned glass to suit, cut to the existing rebate, with the edges worked so it sits properly in old timber beading. What we will not do is leave a child height annealed pane in a kitchen door because it looks nice. If a decorative pattern cannot be matched in a safety product, we will say that at survey rather than after the original has been taken out.

Access out here is the easy part, which has a real effect on cost. Off street parking or a driveway, a side return to get a pane to a rear door, and no permit to buy. The work goes faster and the survey can usually be done the same week.

Offices and commercial: the City, Canary Wharf, Park Royal

Commercial work in the City, around Canary Wharf and across the Park Royal and Acton industrial estates is mostly glazed partitions, entrance screens, door panels in patch fittings and internal manifestation. The glass is more straightforward than the building. Tower and managed office work means building management approval, inducted operatives, permits to work, booked goods lifts and loading bay slots measured in half hours, and a lot of it happens outside business hours.

Door panels on patch fittings are the frequent job. Those panes are drilled and notched for the fittings before toughening, and the fitting positions have to be taken from the existing hardware and the adjacent panel rather than from a drawing that may never have been built to. We measure the fittings, not the plan. Park Royal and the western industrial estates are a different kind of easy: wide access, loading space, and openings large enough that the limiting factor is what two people can safely carry.

Emergency boarding, out of hours access and getting a glass van to your door

Boarding is a separate job from glazing and it is worth understanding why. Boarding secures the opening today so that a shop can trade, a flat can be locked and an insurer can see the premises were made safe. Glazing happens once the pane is made, and a toughened pane cannot be made in an hour because the furnace cycle and the processing before it take the time they take. Anybody promising toughened glass within the hour is fitting annealed glass or fitting somebody else's stock size.

Getting to you is its own trade. A glass van needs to stop close to the opening, because carrying a large pane any distance across a pavement with pedestrians is where panes and people get damaged. Across Camden, Islington, Hackney, Westminster and the inner boroughs that means suspended bays, dispensations, loading restrictions, red routes where stopping is simply not allowed at certain hours, and controlled parking zones that make a mid morning arrival worse than a 7am one. The congestion charge and the wider emissions zone apply across our whole working area and we factor them in rather than adding them to the invoice later.

Narrow terraced streets in Walthamstow, Leyton, Tooting and Brixton often have no side access at all, so a rear window pane goes through the house. That needs to be agreed at survey, with a route cleared and floors protected. Mansion blocks in Marylebone, Maida Vale and Kensington need the porter informed, the lift dimensions checked and sometimes a stair carry. None of this is dramatic. It is simply the difference between a job that happens on the booked day and one that does not.

Measuring a damaged opening without making it worse

If you are measuring an opening yourself before we arrive, treat the remaining glass as the hazard. Fragments of toughened glass stay bonded in sheets and come out in slabs, so work from the side rather than reaching under it, wear gloves and eye protection, and leave anything that will drop if disturbed. Measure the frame rebate rather than the glass, at both ends and the middle, and send the smallest figure in each direction.

Photograph the beading and any fittings before anything is cleared, note the thickness from a piece still held in the frame if you can see one safely, and check whether the frame itself is damaged. A twisted or rotten frame will break the new pane as well, and we would rather tell you that at quotation stage than fit a pane into an opening that is going to destroy it. If you would rather not touch it at all, that is the right answer, and the survey is free anywhere in Greater London. Call 020 4634 6045.