Auto glass in guards (Canada)

[Inspector Gadget]

Greetings fellow denizens of the thawing north.

Our office is dealing with a fascinating matter of a glass installer using DOT/automotive safety glass in guards, which isn't allowed prescriptively by Code. The installer and the supplier - a member of a nation-wide chain of familiar name - states that the kind of glass we want (CAN/CGSB 12.1 standard or its ANSI Z97.1 equivalent) is rare/doesn't exist/hasn't been used in years and that the other stuff (ANSI Z26.1 auto glass) has "been used for years" and is "accepted everywhere" but here, because we're that sort of mean/evil folk, I guess.

Have any of you folks elsewhere had a similar problem? Asking for a friend.

FYI, we've basically told the responsible party to either (a) replace with glass that is Code-compliant prescriptively, (b) replace with some other code-compliant assembly or (c) provide us an Alternative Solutions proposal.
We can find no statements of equivalence anywhere, incl. the CCMC database.

 

[Yankee Chronicler]

ANSI Z97.1 covers safety glazing in buildings, not automotive safety glass. CAN/CGSB 12.1 appears to address two types of safety glazing: tempered (which is what we would want) and laminated. They are very different.

In automotive applications, and the windows in modern automobiles EXCEPT THE WINDSHIELD are tempered glass. Windshields are laminated glass, made up of two layers of NON-TEMPERED glass bonded to a membrane later between the two. Since windshield glass isn't tempered, when a windshield breaks there are tiny shards that are very sharp. That's why, pre-airbags, anyone who hit a windshield in an accident came away with a face that looked like raw hamburger.

I don't remember when other glass in cars changed from laminated glass to tempered glass, but I'm old enough to remember family cars with all the windows being laminated glass. When I started restoring a 1939 coupe in the 1970s, I had a local glass shop cut new laminated glass for all the side windows and door windows.

ANSI Z97.1 and CAN/CGSB 12.1 address safety glazing in buildings. ANSI Z26.1 addresses safety glazing in automotive applications. Both include both tempered and laminated glass. ANSI Z26.1 also includes plastic glazing as well as "glass." There's no reason a major glass supplier can't provide safety glazing that meets the standards for glazing in buildings. I think they're trying to sneak something past you.

 

[Inspector Gadget]

There's no reason a major glass supplier can't provide safety glazing that meets the standards for glazing in buildings. I think they're trying to sneak something past you.

Agreed. What I worry about is the possibility that someone has been using a different material, and not got caught.... And if they tried to do that here, in the sticks, maybe they've tried - or are trying - to do that elsewhere.

The test standards for ANSI Z97.1 and Z26.1 are similar, but nonetheless substantively different. The auto glass is tested by having small objects dropped from a large height; the building glass is tested by dropping large objects from a small height. The two are also intended to perform completely different functions: one is intended to stop a pebble from (a) shattering the glass and (b) penetrating the glass. The building glass is intended to stop your tipsy Uncle Lenny from crashing through and falling to his doom.