Hold tight

Posted on - April 20, 2021

I’ve never liked rollercoasters.

If I really want to be sick, I prefer drinking ten pints of lager and jumping up and down a bit.

Same end result.

And nowadays it’s probably cheaper.

As a kid I used to watch the rides being assembled by the travelling fairground workers [‘roustabouts’ I think they call them in the States – I remember an Elvis film of the same title. I think in the UK we use less savoury term of phrase…]. 

Seriously – I’m not sure why anyone would trust a crusty looking bloke with ‘builder’s bum’, a cigarette in one hand and a huge spanner in the other is a guarantee of safety.

I haven’t checked – but I’m fairly sure NASA aren’t getting their sub-contracted labour by trawling caravan parks.

The point is, when it comes to safety, there is no point cutting corners.

It would obviously be false economy [a bit like the government’s excellent, world-beating ‘Track-and-Trace’ App…].

At Durable we believe in taking health and safety very seriously

We are constantly checking and re-testing the effectiveness of the products we use, and how films respond under pressure in various circumstances.

Protecting very large balustrades with safety film to provide protection should the glass break

Most balustrading tends to be used as a safety feature as much as a design element – protecting people from falling over – or through – stairwells and landings. As such it’s very important to make sure any film applied to these areas ‘does what it says on the tin’.

The safety film has to make it safe.

And not just to prevent a fall – the broken or shattered glass that may result needs to be retained so it doesn’t crash down and cause injury or damage to anything – or one – underneath.

Safety test

Take this test we completed on a balustrade to assess the protection offered by a 100 micron safety film when it incorporates a join and the pane is broken.

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To be honest we were expecting something a little more spectacular – or at least a reasonable fall-out [albeit controlled] of fractured glass.

As you can tell from the picture – there was very little to see!
You can see the granulated fractured glass, but it’s clearly held in place.

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The join held with no failure – so we used glass suckers on either side [with ropes] to pull the pane backwards and forwards – stressing the join to get it to collapse. 

After five cycles backwards and forwards the join finally failed.

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This is the total mess we created. 

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Although the glass pane fractured as intended, There was so little stray glass – it’s hardly visible.

We’d covered the test area with plastic sheeting to catch the mess.

We may have to scale that back in future…

The film worked perfectly

Glad as we are that the film performed so brilliantly – we were a little disappointed we’d set the whole thing up and it ended with a bit of a damp squib.

On the plus side – once again our films prove that they give high levels of protection and are a simple, cost effective solution – that minimises damage – and may save lives.

We have been in the business for over 50 years.
We are the oldest window film company in Europe.
We are good with glass.

Durable

Stick with us.