What we get called for
A smashed sliding door, a broken window, an emergency at an hour when nothing is open. Different causes, same evening: a room full of glass and a house that no longer closes.
A slider is the biggest, lowest, least overlooked pane in most houses, and it faces a garden nobody can see into. Forced entry rarely defeats the lock — it goes through the glass beside it, or levers the panel out of its track. The damage is almost never just the pane: the frame, the track and the interlock take it too, which is why a glass-only repair so often fails within the year.
A landscaper does not have to be careless for this to happen. A blade throws a pebble at a speed no window is built for, and it goes through a ground-floor pane before anyone hears it. It is one of the most common single-pane claims there is, and one of the easiest to document, because the impact leaves a small, unmistakable point of entry.
A branch, a piece of somebody else’s roof, a garden chair. Coastal and open-lot properties take the worst of it. Impact damage often reaches further than the broken pane — a unit next to it can be knocked out of square or have its seal broken without cracking, and that does not show up until months later as fogging.
A ball, a ladder, a slip while cleaning. Undramatic, and covered as often as the rest. Worth reporting properly rather than living with a cracked pane, because a crack in a sealed unit means the unit has already stopped working as one.
How it goes
The order matters, and most of what goes wrong with a claim goes wrong on the first evening — before we have been called. So the list below has two halves, and the short one is yours.
Tonight — you
Whoever ends up boarding the opening — you, a neighbor, a 24-hour service — take the photographs first. It costs a minute, and plywood covers the exact thing a claim needs to see: the point of impact, the direction of the break, what else moved. Board rather than tape, and keep the pieces you sweep up. Then call us.
From there — us
The person who comes is the one who will specify the unit, and they come to look at the opening it has to go into. Not a subcontractor, and not somebody working a commission. Everything after this follows from what they find.
Photographs of the damage and of the opening behind it, measurements, and the condition of the frame and the sill the unit sits in. One visit, one set of records, taken by the people who will do the work — so nothing has to be described twice or guessed at later.
This is the part nobody expects. A claim puts back what was there, but you are choosing a window either way — so it may as well be the one you would have picked. We measure the opening properly and specify an Andersen unit around it: the series, the finish, the grille, the glass. Where that goes beyond what the claim covers, you will know the difference before anything is ordered.
What broke, what it takes to put it back, and what has to come out to get there — priced line by line off the measurements and the design, with the photographs attached, and sent where it needs to go. An adjuster is not being difficult when they query a one-line estimate; they cannot approve what has not been described.
The crew that measured does the installation, and we take the debris with us. No dumpster in the driveway, no bare opening over a weekend, and nobody else to chase if anything is not right.
Why it matters who does it
The usual pattern is an emergency board-up firm at midnight, a glass company a week later, and a carpenter after that when the frame turns out to be damaged. Nobody owns the whole thing, and the parts that fall between them are the parts that come back.
What broke is not just the glass, it is a sealed working unit. Two or three glass panes, a spacer and insulating Argon or Krypton gas between them, made as one piece and not repairable. A glass company can replace glass, but it will usually be generic rather than the exact glass the window or door was manufactured with. A different low-E coating, so the visual may be a very different tint, hue or quality glass from the original glass panes on either side of it. A different or no seal with no manufacturer’s warranty on it.
A board-up crew is not looking at the frame and a glass company does not price it. If the opening took the impact, that surfaces after the claim is settled, when it is a new conversation and a new expense.
Photographs, measurements and scope from a single visit describe one job. Three sets from three companies describe three, and they will not agree with each other.
If the replacement is out by an eighth, or the seal fails in a year, there is no question about whose it is.
What is actually in your window
Cut through the bottom edge of a modern window and this is what is in there. The panes do very little on their own — what slows the heat is the gas held between them, and the spacer and seal that keep it there.
The gas is sealed in when the unit is built, behind the spacer and the edge seal. It is part of the unit rather than something applied to a pane, which is why a broken one is replaced whole — and why the replacement has to be specified to match what was there, not just cut to size.
If it happened tonight
One call starts the process. A Project Designer comes out to your home, gathers everything your claim needs to be approved, and upon approval, we will install your new Andersen window or patio door. One company, from the first phone call to installation.
In New Jersey, call (732) 479-7123
No obligation. No high-pressure sales. Just expert design advice.
