How terrible and how sad, I'm so sorry this has happened to you. And no, I for one do not think that is normal, nor should Electrolux even if it's 15 years old!!! What is wrong with them?? I'm old enough to remember when they made a vacuum that lasted 25 years, then got reconditioned and lasted some more. Our appliance dealer was telling us that these days it's all about making it as cheaply as possible, plastic parts where they used to be metal, etc.

I would get "higher authority" at Electrolux on the phone, write a letter to the President if needed, and (if it were me personally) probably sick my DH on them.

5 years old with shattered glass all over the place? That's a liability hazard and I suspect that all ovens are built so that that would never happen. I'd go further than the service department. And you are very lucky that no one was hurt.

If this was to be expected, manufacturers would have to recommend replacing an appliance every few years (5 obviously would be too long), which is ridiculous. If anyone had been near that oven, an emergency visit would have been necessary.

I'll heed your advice on checking out ALL things on future appliances but in the mean time Electrolux needs to do something now!

I would be all over that company, with threats to talk to the correct consumer agency (can't think of the name,) if necessary. They should be bending over backwards to take care of this!!

This should never happen. Someone could have been seriously hurt. If you can't get anywhere with the customer service department, I'd write a letter to the President of Electrolux US requesting an immediate replacement. (You can probably find out the address and name from the Electrolux web site.) This is a serious liability issue and, if nothing else, they need to find out why it broke.

Good Luck. Our new Electrolux Icon is beautiful and works great, but after seeing this, I don't think I'm going to leave the house while it's running a self-clean!

I'd also make clear that you are a member of GW and explain how people come here to make kitchen decisions.
I hope you have pictures of the aftermath because that was a clear hazard and I bet the thought of a recall would make them blanch! You need to consider hiring a lawyer if they do not make good on this, and then some for your trouble. Like you said, imagine if the grandkids were there!

Actually it would be best if Mari Joan took this to the consumer agency's that are out there to protect everyone. Electrolux needs to investigate if this particular oven was defective or the design. Though no one was hurt this time, it's too big of an issue to just get an oven replacement and have this possbily happen to others.

Tempered glass often explodes unexpectedly. People installing shower doors have it explode in their hand. But, it's NOT SHARP, nor is a big safety hazard. It just what happens sometimes with safety glass. Usually, the smallest of scratches, or a heat/cool cycle is what produces this event. It's not "normal", but yes, it IS a normal part of the realm of experience with tempered glass. Maybe 1 out of 100,000 oven doors shatter. And 1 out of 100,000 glass top ranges shatter. And 1 out of 10,000 shower doors shatter. and 1 out of 5000 tempered glass windows/doors shatter. The more transportation and vibration that occurs with any piece of tempered glass, the more chance it has to receive micro abrasions that create weak points that can and do shatter. And it is no where near of a disaster/safety hazard as the panic on here would have you think. Now, if safety glass wasn't used in these applications, THAT would be the potential bloodbath experience!

I agree with aloha2009. It's not acceptab;e and a higher authority needs to know about the safety issue, the defect, and Electrlux's lack of concern.

I am so glad no one was hurt.

I appreciate all your sympathy. We have not persued this further than the service person and her supervisor on Saturday. At that time, they offered to sell us the replacement part which we discussed and called them back to order. My DH is very handy and we decided we could handle it. Which was born out by the fact that he then did dismantle the door in order to clean the glass out (which was continuing to fall out little by little every time we moved the door). We did suggest that the glass might have been defective. They said to keep the glass pieces and pay for a repairman to come out and determine the defectiveness. Really!! From little shards of glass?

So sorry this happened to you, and glad no one was hurt. Even if it is safety glass, hot glass flying through the air would be scary!
In researching appliances in the Appliance Forum, I have read a lot of people refer to the self clean feature as a self destruct button. Apparently that definitely happened to you! If you want more feedback from people with similar experiences, try posting in Appliance, and i bet a search will turn up a lot of info, too. I hope Elux takes care of you! Be sure to post the outcome.

This DOES happen which is one reason I tell people to try out their self clean right away (and also why I'm afraid to use mine!). The other reason of course is that if your electronics are gonna fry, it's during the self-clean cycle.

It's not uncommon. I guess I can't blame Electrolux for not wanting to handle this after the warranty is expired, but it would make them look like one of those companies we like to buy things from if they at least took on part of the replacement expense!

I lived in an apartment some years ago where I had an exploding glass incident. I was in a bedroom when I heard thud-crackle-crackle-crackle. I went into the living room to find the sliding glass door to my balcony shattered into a million little tempered glass cubes. I think that a bird hit the window. I was lucky in that the glass was still in the frame, although it was starting to sag. I was able to get maintenance to deal with it before it gave out.

Yikes. We just put these ovens in our new home. I'm definitely going to clean the oven this weekend, even though it doesn't need it.

I need to do both mine but I'm scared. Knowing that it's safety glass helps though!

Cawaps, that sounds more like a kid with a pellet gun than a bird--you usually find the body when they hit THAT hard! :O

we have the icons too about 5 years old. never used the self clean feature, i guess i am not going to be using it after all these horror stories !

I have had tempered glass shatter in my house for no reason. just exploded.
another time a shower door exploded in my hands as i was installing it! that was my fault for allowing metal to touch the edge of the glass.

This isn't the first time I've heard of oven door glass shattering. It reminds me of the current spate of incidents with Pyrex containers shattering. It that case it is blamed on a change in the formulation of the glass.

BTW: does the Elux oven door have a heat shield that you have to put in place before self-cleaning begins? My GE has that.

An anecdote (a single incident) does not build a case against tempered glass or against any manufacturer.

To anyone, it is momentarily traumatic. If one doesn't know it might happen, it is a bit more traumatic than otherwise.

When tempered glass explodes, it is deemed normal. It does happen.

My daughter was in her bedroom in her apt in SLC a couple years ago. She heard a horrible explosion/crash and ran into the bathroom and it was the glass shower wall...the apt complex made her and her roommate pay for the breakage. It was not fixed by the time they moved and the mngt said it was because they were unable to find that part anywhere since it was older and was no longer available. She will never again have a glass shower...too afraid it will happen when she is in it. c

Did you buy it from a local store? If it were me, I would be in touch with them immediately. They have reps that they can contact and get you some action.

glad nobody was hurt. Safety glass or not, someone could have been burned, or a piece of glass could have hit someone in the eye...oh boy...

what about homeowner's insurance? You might be covered. A friend of ours had the motor on their treadmill die after being zapped by lightning. They replaced the entire treadmill for them.

It is startling. And it's rare. But it is normal. Any tempered glass anywhere at any time can do this. No need to create this great hue and cry over what happened. Any of you that have a shower door, or patio door, or glass topped stove can have this happen to you. That gorgeous new glass bartop with the salmon swimming in it? Yup, it could happen to that too. It's just part of dealing with tempered glass. Sometimes you are the ones the very long odds apply to.

When I moved into my house, the appliance repairman had to come out to work on our fridge. He was a very instructive man with lots of advice. His "most important piece of advice" was to run the self-clean feature on the double ovens immediately. He said, from his experience, that is what causes the most problems for people..... and that it is something people don't do within the warranty period.

After 5 years, I wouldn't expect a company to pay for anything. I also expect for things to start breaking a day or so after the warranty expires. :p

OP, sorry this happened to you... but I think your warning will be helpful to others on the board.

The word "explosion" is almost certainly a poor description of what actually happened. An explosion suggests material being thrown violently over a wide area. When tempered glass fails, it mostly just falls down. So, the OP's incident was probably not really dangerous at all.

The glass is manufactured with built in stress using a heat-treatment process. This makes the glass much stronger, and also safer, because if it does fail it will break into a lot of small pieces with relatively safe edges instead of large chunks with razor sharp edges. The huge number of small fragments may look dramatic, but they are much, much safer than large pieces.

The rapid release of all the stress in the whole sheet of glass makes a sound like an explosion, but individual pieces generally don't travel very far. Wide scattering generally occurs when pieces hit a hard surface and slide along - the pieces did not fly through the air to their final resting place.

Tempered glass's strength is also its weakness(or do I mean the other way around?). The built-in stress that makes the glass stronger and safer also makes the entire sheet of glass disintegrate as a result of what might seem a very small knock. Once the glass fractures in one spot, the crack propagates and multiples rapidly until the whole sheet disintegrates.

In the case of shower doors and oven doors, failures are generally caused when glass tries to expand/contract due to temperature changes, but is constrained by a frame or hinge that creates a pressure point which initiates a crack.

Is anyone still awake? :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Tempered glass shattering

I omitted to mention that you should check the glass has space to expand within the frame when you replace it. It's likely that the glass was trapped in some way, and the extreme temperature of the self-clean cycle made it expand beyond the point where it could survive. The replacement panel will suffer the same fate if the problem is not rectified.

If people follow the good advice above to run a self-clean cycle when the oven is new, they will detect this kind of manufacturing issue.

To the OP: So sorry to hear of your oven door problems. Hope it's an easy fix when the part arrives.

Davidro1 - I agree that a single incident does not make a case. I now understand that these things happen. How the manufacturer handles the situation is what I am concerned about.

Weedmeister - No heat shield but that was not the glass that shattered.

Beekeeperswife - We bought it locally. They were the first ones we contacted. Standard party line - "Out of warranty? Call repairman."

PeterH2 - I agree "Explodes" is overkill. But startling titles is what gets responses here. And thank you for the tip about expansion. As a matter of a fact, when DH took door apart, the plastic clip that held the glass panels in place was split at the screw down, looking like it was over-torqued at factory assembly. That was an additional $24 for a 2" x 3" piece of plastic.

And to everyone else who took the time to relate their stories, Thank You. A quick search on the internet shows that this is not as uncommon an occurrence as we might like.

"That's a liability hazard and I suspect that all ovens are built so that that would never happen."

No. Tempered glass breaks up into small harmless crumbs when it breaks.

"If anyone had been near that oven, an emergency visit would have been necessary."

Very unlikely.

The noise is the tempering stress being released.
Nothing goes flying anywhere, the glass shatters and falls as small crumbs.

"Someone could have been seriously hurt."

Not really.
car windows use tempered glass so if they break it is NOT dangerous.

"I hope you have pictures of the aftermath because that was a clear hazard"

No it os not,

"a higher authority needs to know about the safety issue"

What safety issue?
That tempered glass works?

"It that case it is blamed on a change in the formulation of the glass."

Pyrex claims they have not changed anything.

Tempered glass has a larger stress introduced during manufacture.
The stress is between the outer layer of the glass and the core.
It can make a lot of noise when the stress is relieved, but it is very far from an 'explosion' with anything flying.

The stress in the glass makes the sound when it is suddenly released and the glass shatters into crumbs.

Many times the crumbs even manage to stat in position following the noise.

A glass repair company can sometimes even remove the glass unit without having the crumbs separate.

It is all normal, and the noise is NOT an 'explosion,' nothing goes flying.

It only takes a tiny defect to make a tempered panel shatter.

Do you know the model of Electrolux oven? I have a single wall oven from them and want to double check. It's in the garage now, but I will be sure to run the clean cycle first thing when it's installed.

Several people have posted factual information about tempered glass.

I believe brickeyee did us a big favor.
He listed some of the other responses, and he responded to them quietly.

As a next step, it may be appropriate to point out that brickeyee isolated some of the worst cases of humans drawing "chicken little" conclusions. This is how physical crowds become mobs resulting in bad conduct. Let's all pile on since that is thing to do, momentarily. Hey why not we're just humans being humans. You get the picture.

Hth

I remember reading an article about this a few years back. Yes I understand the shock when this happens. I don't think the shards of glass are dangerous as there aren't usually sharp edges with this 'safety glass'. However, when using the self-cleaning on the oven, the oven heats to very high temperature and if you touched ones of those pieces, you could have severe burns. If you had a vinyl floor I imagine it could even melt it - I don't know if the heat from it could start a fire, but it doesn't sound like an experiment I would like to take part in. I'm happy that no one was injured. BTW, I only use this feature on my oven every 1 1/2 years to 2 years. I don't like to clean my oven until I HAVE to do it.

This is OT. But, I thought that I'd let you know that if any of you or your friends own a Chevrolet Trailblazer or GMC Envoy that the windows tend to explode. The back window of a friend's exploded last year (she wasn't nearby). Apparently, it was so common that when she called the local glass place they said they keep quite a few in stock because they burst so often.

As a side note, I'm so glad I didn't use the self clean feature on our old range. I seriously thought about doing it a few years ago (it was already old then). I read that it could get hotter than 1000 degrees and there was a possibility of it melting/ruining the cabinet next to it. I'm sure it would have exploded right away!

"However, when using the self-cleaning on the oven, the oven heats to very high temperature and if you touched ones of those pieces, you could have severe burns."

The outer layer of glass is not hot enough to burn.

Notice there are usually two or three layers on an oven window?

We had a couple large tempered units shatter over the past few years.

They are about 7 feet tall and about 30 inches wide.

It does make a loud 'thump' sound when they let go.

The glass stayed in place on both units. One was the inner layer, one was the outer.

I agree that appliances seem to made much cheaper these days. The fridge I have now, which is supposed to be "professional", doesn't feel nearly as sturdy as my 14 yr. old Whirlpool. Also, I could use the self-clean feature on my old Whirlpool range the whole 14 yrs. we had it. No troubles at all (except the white panels had yellowed :(

Arc2V - I'm not sure the exact model #. Not sure it makes a difference. It is an Icon professional series.

This DOES happen which is one reason I tell people to try out their self clean right away (and also why I'm afraid to use mine!). The other reason of course is that if your electronics are gonna fry, it's during the self-clean cycle. --fori

I second this advice for any brand of self-cleaning oven. We had no issue with the glass breaking, but had a Frigidaire oven short out during the first ever self-cleaning cycle. It was almost out of warranty--thank goodness I had made a mess that needed more than just a wipe-down. The company had it repaired free of charge.

This thread brought back a childhood memory of the time that my grandmother's TV tube 'exploded.' We heard a loud POP in the LR, and rushed in to find the safety glass in a pile on the floor.

mari-joan, sorry you had to go through the aggravation of the oven incident, but thank you for posting--this thread has been very informative.

"Pyrex claims they have not changed anything."

Pyrex is a trade name. Corning used to make Pyrex cookware but sold the factory. The old Pyrex was borasilicate glass. Since around 1998 it has changed to soda lime glass.

Here is a link that might be useful: article discussing shattering Pyrex

Thanks. Mine is not an ICON, but I will be careful nonetheless.

"grandmother's TV tube 'exploded.' We heard a loud POP in the LR, and rushed in to find the safety glass in a pile on the floor."

TV picture tubes are NOT safety glass.

That is why they are behind a plastic layer.

Unlike safety glass simply turning to crumbs, a large picture tube can spray shattered glass as it implodes, they have a very high vacuum inside.

Sorry, brickeyee, I must have been mistaken--I was about 9 or 10 at the time. There was a pile of glass 'gravel' on the floor in front of the TV. It must have been from the screen, not the tube--I was under the impression that in those old TVs (45 years ago) everything glass was part of the tube.

I humbly apologize for worrying anyone who is still using a 45 year-old television.

Ah - TV tubes! When I was young and foolish (I am no longer young), a friend and I found an old TV tube at the side of a quiet country lane. As luck would have it, there was a handy supply of broken brisks nearby. The obvious idea occurred. We stood on the opposite side of the lane, maybe 15' away, and threw a couple of half bricks at the tube. Both missed.

At that point I said "I wonder if we should stand a bit further away?", so we moved off another 10 feet and tried again. This time our aim was better - the tube exploded violently, throwing glass over a wide area. Where we had stood for our first attempt to break the tube, we found large jagged shards of glass about 3/4" thick with lethal points and edges.

Whenever some mild misfortune befalls me, I try to remember all the bloody stupid things I have done in my life (a good number of which involved motorcycles) and somehow miraculously survived. I think the balance is still in my favour...

Glass bakeware is a whole other matter from thermal glass. I cannot understand how it is suitable for real-live kitchen use. Plus that CR article lists company behavior I'd have to classify as lying and degenerate.