Willie Mae Truesdale heard a loud explosion coming from her kitchen. When she went to investigate, she found her glass oven door in pieces all over the floor. \u201cIt was shocking and you had to really see it to believe it,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was like what in the world. Glass shattered, glass was out here on the floor.\u201d To add to the confusion, her oven wasn\u2019t even on at the time. And what\u2019s scarier: Truesdale is far from the only homeowner whose oven exploded. [1]<\/p>\n
The Curius Case of Exploding Glass Oven Doors
\nCheryl, a suburban mom, experienced a similar shock. She tried to bake brownies but they came out soggy in the middle. Her oven was only three months old but she realized its temperature was about 25 degrees off. She called a professional to fix her appliance. But first, she decided to put it on a self-cleaning cycle. Towards the end of it, there was a loud explosion and the inner glass over the door shattered into the oven.<\/p>\n
But Michelle Wheat\u2019s oven door explosion left her with glass all over her kitchen. Like Truesdale, Wheat\u2019s three-year-old oven was not on at the time. Fortunately, none of her four young children were injured from the glass. And like Truesdale, her oven came from Frigidaire, Cheryl\u2019s was Bosch, but other brands also have reports of exploding glass doors. In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received about 450 reports about this occurrence since 2019.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/abc11.com\/video\/embed\/?pid=12792849<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, all three women struggled with the manufacturers after the event. Truesdale\u2019s oven was still under warranty, but Frigidaire\u2019s technician blamed the family for the explosion even though the oven was off. So she had to pay for a new door out of pocket. Luckily, Bosch replaced Cheryl\u2019s oven after NBC reached out to them for comment.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Wheat\u2019s oven was no longer under warranty and she had to pay the technician $100 only for him to say the glass was broken and they needed to replace it, which cost the family another $314. Frigidaire suggested Wheat buy an extended warranty in case this happened again. \u201cThis should not have happened,\u201d said the frustrated mom of six. \u201cThat was the point I was trying to make to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Causes Oven Doors to Shatter?
\n\u201cThere are two scenarios of why oven glass can break spontaneously,\u201d says Mark Meshulam of Chicago Window Expert. \u201cThere\u2019s one family of oven glass that is soda lime glass, which is window glass, and it\u2019s heated and cooled rapidly so that it becomes tempered. That\u2019s one type of glass that is used in oven doors. Another type is borosilicate glass. It is more used in laboratory glassware or the old time Pyrex glass, and that one tolerates heat and cold very well. So, the shift to soda lime glass has brought about an increase in these types of breaks because it\u2019s not as tolerant of the thermal cycles that the glass will go through.\u201d [2]<\/p>\n