OT: Strange noises in the night!

The ceramic material is important here. Thieves use little pieces of ceramic porcelain, usually broken from spark plugs, to shatter car windows and grab what's inside.

Maybe it was the ceramic-tiled wall, and not the glass, under stress so to speak. A loose piece may have hit the glass, even a very small piece.

And yet, there are millions of them out there! Just a very few decide to self destruct like mine!

After a lot of thought, the only thing we can think of is that, behind this door when it opens is our laundry hamper. It is made of very soft plastic, but when the door hits it, it does sort of 'flex' a bit if you happen to keep pushing on it. Our thought is that seven years of this 'flexing' might have been the eventual cause of the failure...

Our old cat was nicknamed the 'Woozzle' for the Winnie the Pooh creatures that go bump and thump in the night...

Good point. Nearly 60 years ago my father owned a hardware store, and featured "shatter-proof" storm doors.

The standard demo was to whack them with your fist, the "glass" flexed wildly, but never broke.... until one day it shattered, rendering my father in need of multiple stitches in his arm :-( ...Jim Thompson

;-) Nope, no kids!

Tempered glass has an outer layer that's in compression and an inner layer that's in tension. Its durability comes from the compressive stress forcing surface cracks to stay shut so they don't grow rapidly.

Once you get a crack that propagates far enough into the inner layer, and a bit of water gets into it, the whole thing's liable to come apart like that. (Water greatly reduces the energy required to create new glass surface area, so cracks grow like crazy.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs