Which anti-theft glass or armored glass is best for my house? And what price €/m2?
In this post we explain the different safety glass on the market and what you should take into account to make the best decision.
In case you still don’t know us, let me introduce our studio: we’re ERA architects, the English speaking green architecture studio to call in Barcelona.
Actually, I’m Esther Rovira, an architect in Barcelona and a passive house designer for new sustainable builds and big green renovations in Barcelona and Catalonia.
In this post you’ll find all the essentials from our professional point of view.
I hope this helps you!
What is anti-theft glass?
A burglar-proof glass is a glass with two sheets glued together by a polycarbonate sheet called butyral or butyl.
Depending on the thickness of this sheet, it will have more or less resistance to impacts.
What is an armored glass?
An armored glass is one that has a butyl sheet of 13 or more millimeters.
How much does armored glass cost?
A 1.20 by 1.20m bulletproof glass costs around €290 (without frame or installation).
How to choose the best anti-theft glass
In order to know which security glass is best for your home, you must first know the different types of glass and how their anti-theft capacity is analyzed.
The resistance capacity of a glass is defined by the EN 12758 standard on a scale ranging from P1A to P8B.
This scale differentiates between two groups: anti-impact glass and anti-theft glass.
ANTI-IMPACT GLASS
The anti-impact glasses are those resistant to impacts (that is, an occasional strong blow).
They are P1A, P2A, P3A, P4A and P5A glasses.
ANTI-THEFT GLASSES
Only glass from P6B onwards can be considered anti-theft (that is, resistant to repeated intentional knocks with the aim of stealing your Maserati).
And in practice, what does anti-theft glass mean?
On the one hand, for the purposes of the standard, this means that a P6B glass would resist a burglary attempt for between 10 and 30 minutes and a P8B glass would resist between 20 and 50 minutes (depending on the experience and skill of the thief).
On the other hand, for practical purposes, a P4A could be considered to offer resistance to investigation since it is assumed that you also have alarms and perhaps other means of deterrence while trying to enter.
The perfect glass
The glasses must also have an insulating capacity so that the interior heat does not escape in winter.
This is achieved with one or two cameras (depending on location and climate).
Each chamber separates two groups of laminated glass made up of two sheets with their own butyl.
So depending on your location and climate, you should look for the glass composition that best suits the weather and anti-theft conditions.
Below we show you a glass composition that turned out to be efficient but not anti-theft for the upper floors of a 400m2 house that we have recently calculated:
Our recommendation:
Our experience as Architects in Barcelona tells us that the most advisable thing is for an expert to analyze and design the composition of the glass to have an efficient house or a passive and safe house.
In our architects studio in Barcelona, we consider the climatic location and nearby shadows to extract the climatic data and thus provide the best composition of the glass, but also of the walls and roof.
I recommend that you choose an architect Passive House designer to design your house efficiently.
When choosing glasses, it is important to apply common sense:
– it is not necessary to put armored glass (unless you are a partner of Pablo Escobar)
– it is not necessary to install anti-theft glass in the windows of the second floor
– thieves do not risk making noise by breaking glass for 15 minutes to get in, they prefer to force a sliding door (add threaded systems on the upright)
I hope this post will help you make the best decision to choose the glass for your house?
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Hope this is helpful!
Best of luck on this adventure.
See you on the next post,
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