Broken Window at Home? What to Do Before the Glass Crew Gets There

It always happens at a bad time. A ball comes through the side window, a door slams on a cracked pane, a hot afternoon finally finishes off a chipped piece of glass, or you come home to find someone broke in. Whatever the cause, the steps that follow are the same.

1. Clear the room first

Broken glass travels a lot farther than people expect. Slivers end up across the floor, in rug fibers and in window tracks. Before anything else, get kids and pets out of the room and close the door behind them. Put on real shoes, not slippers, and grab work gloves if you have them.

2. Leave hanging glass in the frame

The most common injury we see after a break is from someone pulling a loose shard out of the frame by hand. Large pieces that are still held by the frame are usually safer left exactly where they are until we arrive.

• Cracked but still in one piece: run clear packing tape across the crack in an X and around the edges. It keeps the pane from letting go if the house shifts or the wind picks up.
• A piece is about to fall: wear thick gloves and eye protection, lift it straight out instead of wiggling it, and set it in a cardboard box. Glass cuts right through trash bags.
• Ground floor or a break-in: do not touch anything until you have taken photos, and call the police non-emergency line if someone got in.

3. Take photos before you clean up

Stand back and take a wide shot of the window, then a few close-ups of the break and anything on the floor. If you plan to involve insurance, those photos and a police report number for any break-in or vandalism are the first things an adjuster will ask for. We cover how that usually works in does homeowners insurance cover a broken window.

4. Clean up the slivers the right way

1. Pick up the large pieces by hand with gloves on and put them in a box.
2. Sweep outward from the window, then vacuum the floor, the sill and the window track.
3. Press a damp paper towel over hard floors to grab the fine slivers a vacuum leaves behind.
4. Check the rug, the couch cushions and the pet bed before anyone goes barefoot in that room again.

5. Cover the opening

An open window is a security problem and, in a Sacramento summer, an air conditioning problem. For one night, heavy plastic sheeting taped to the frame with painter's tape or a piece of cardboard will do. For a ground floor window, a door light or anything after a break-in, plywood screwed over the opening is the right call. If you do not have the tools or the plywood, that is part of what we do.

6. What we will ask when you call

A few details help us show up with the right plan:

• Which window or door it is, and whether it is upstairs or on the ground floor
• A rough size, even just "about as wide as a doorway"
• Single pane or dual pane. Dual pane glass has two layers with a gap between them
• Any small etched label in a corner of the glass. That stamp usually means the glass is tempered

Tempered safety glass is required in certain spots, like doors, glass right next to doors, and big panes close to the floor or near a tub. If your broken pane was tempered, the replacement has to be too, and we will match what the location requires.

Repair or replace the window?

Most of the time it is a glass job, not a window job. If the frame is straight and the window opens and locks the way it should, we replace the glass or the sealed dual pane unit and leave the frame, trim and stucco alone. We explain that process in can you replace just the glass in a double pane window.

The exceptions are a bent or corroded aluminum frame, a window that was already failing, or old single pane glass you have been meaning to upgrade anyway. In that case it can make sense to fix it properly once. If you are weighing that, single pane vs dual pane in Sacramento heat walks through the tradeoff.