Tonight: the board-up, and what it can and cannot do
Done properly, a board-up is four steps. Clear the loose glass out of the sash channel and the track. Take off the glazing stops or the bead so the fragments still sitting in the pocket come out rather than working loose over the next week. Sheet the opening with a rigid panel screwed into the door frame, not into the drywall returns, which will not hold a screw under load. Then tape the interior edge so the remaining dust stops migrating into the room.
If only one lite (one pane of glass) of a sealed unit broke, the second lite is often still standing. That is not a reason to wait: the assembly is broken, the remaining lite is unsupported at the spacer, and it is coming out either way.
Two honest limits, because the alternative is implying something untrue. A screwed panel is a weather closure and a visual barrier: it slows entry, it does not prevent it, and the rest of the security plan for the nights before the glass lands should assume that. And tempered fragments are small, sharp, and travel much further across a hard floor than people expect; they collect in the track, so the track gets vacuumed before anything is set back into it.
Why the whole panel let go at once
Tempered glass is heat-treated so the surfaces are in compression and the core is in tension. That is what makes it several times stronger than annealed glass of the same thickness, and it is also what makes a breach anywhere release the entire pane into small pieces rather than a few large ones.
What we actually find when we take one out:
- An edge chip or nick from an earlier knock, working slowly until a cold night or a hard close finishes it. This is the most common cause by a wide margin
- A collapsed roller or a racked panel, loading the glass on a corner instead of on its setting blocks
- Direct impact: thrown gravel from a mower, furniture, hail
- A spontaneous break from an inclusion in the glass, which is real but rare, and worth knowing about only because it is the one nobody caused
The distinction matters for what happens next. If the door was already dragging or hard to latch, the glass did not fail on its own, and new glass in the same panel gets loaded the same way.
Tempered vs. laminated in a patio door
Both are safety glazing and both satisfy the requirement for glass in a door. They fail differently, and that difference is the whole decision.
- Tempered. The default build on patio doors: best availability, lowest cost, strongest for its thickness. When it breaks it breaks completely and the opening is open.
- Laminated. Two lites permanently laminated to a plastic interlayer. When it breaks the fragments stay stuck to the interlayer and the pane generally stays in the opening, which is why it is the choice where forced entry, sound or a fall hazard is the concern. Heavier, dearer, and usually a longer lead time because it is not the stocked build.
A common middle answer is a sealed unit with one tempered lite and one laminated lite, with the laminated lite facing the side you care about. Worth volunteering: laminated does not stop a determined entry either. It delays it, noisily, and it keeps the opening closed while that is happening.
What is actually being replaced: the unit, the panel, or the door
Three different jobs, and they are not interchangeable.
- The sealed unit only. Possible when the panel is built to be re-glazed (a bead or stop-glazed sash) and the sash, the rollers and the frame are all sound. Cheapest path, keeps everything else.
- The whole operating panel. When the sash is factory-glazed rather than bead-glazed, when it is bent or racked, or when the glass size is no longer produced but a compatible panel is.
- The whole door: frame, panels, track and interlock. When the frame is out of square, when water has been into the sill or the framing under it, or when the series has been out of production long enough that no panel and no roller can be sourced. That is the honest answer for a good number of the 1980s and 1990s aluminium sliders still in service here.
The rule we do not bend: no new glass into a frame that is out of square. A unit set into a racked frame takes the same corner load that broke the last one, and it fails on the same schedule.
What actually sets the lead time
Sealed units are fabricated to order for the exact sight size, thickness, spacer and coating. Tempered lites are cut before they are heat-treated, so nothing gets trimmed at the shop to make a near-miss fit.
Anything that adds a step adds time: laminated construction, a low-emissivity coating specified on a particular surface, an obscure or textured lite, an oversize panel that ships freight rather than on a local run, or a frame colour that has to be matched. Obsolete series are the real delay, and that one is a parts search rather than a fabrication queue: the answer arrives when it arrives.
So we do not quote a date at the door. We take the sight size, the glass build-up and the spacer at the visit, get the fabricator’s own window, and put that window in writing. A date that is not the fabricator’s date is a sales date.
Fixing the cause, not just the glass
Rollers and track. A patio door panel rides on two roller assemblies. When one collapses the panel drops at that corner, drags on the track, and loads the glass edge the rest of the way. Replace both rather than the failed one, then adjust the height so the panel meets the jamb square along its whole height instead of touching at the top.
The interlock and the weatherstrip. With the panel out, this is the only convenient chance to replace the pile and check the interlock. These are inexpensive parts now and a second visit later.
The sill. Grit in the track is an abrasive, and the track is the part that wears. On a door that has been dragging for a season, expect the track to be part of the conversation, and if water has been standing in it, expect the framing below it to be part of the conversation too.