With all of the benefits that window film offers to homeowners and businesses – energy efficiency, glare reduction and lower utility bills being a few – it’s amazing that more people haven’t embraced window film in their homes.
Fortifying Your Home
This is even more surprising in light of the fact that window film can make your home safer in two ways. Window film itself can have a dimming effect that prevents would-be burglars from peering inside your home, which lowers the probability that your home will be a prime candidate for home invasion.
Window film protects you in another way as well: Window film greatly enhances the chances that your windows will be protected against shattering. These are even window films out there marketed as “shatterproof” that use laminated film in order to protect homeowners against home invasions and even earthquakes.
Window Film and Earthquakes
Californians know the havoc that earthquakes can wreak on homes and businesses. Shattered windows and thousands in lost merchandise can sometimes pale in comparison to the irreplaceable damage that earthquakes can leave in their wake.
While window film can’t entirely protect against earthquakes or the sun’s UV rays, shatterproof window film can come pretty close. Window film can block 99% of the sun’s UV rays, which have been linked to cancer and melanoma, and even work to prevent the lion’s share of window damage related to earthquakes.
As proof, California news agencies recently covered the 7.2 earthquake that decimated local homes and businesses. Nearly everyone in the earthquake’s way suffered some window damage…except windows protected with shatterproof window film.
Store owners were elated that their merchandise didn’t get compromised and homeowners were even more surprised that their homes remained relatively untouched.
Mechanics of Shatterproof Film
A University of California-San Diego team of researchers later studied how shatterproof window film was able to weather the powerful earthquake. It turns out that the shock absorbers and adhesives in shatterproof window film offered much-needed protection against the quake’s otherwise devastating effects.
In an isolated study that definitely shouldn’t be repeated anywhere but in a safe lab environment, researchers even set off a bomb to test the resilience of shatterproof window film. Guess what happened? The shatterproof window film kept the window fully intact whereas the unprotected window was blown to smithereens.
Shatterproof Film and Safety
The implications from this study are pretty profound. If you have a family and you’re looking to do anything in your power to keep them safe, then shatterproof window film might be the missing link to bolstering your home security.
The fact that shatterproof window film protects your window from blowing apart following an earthquake or sudden impact means that you won’t have to shell out more money later for a window replacement.
Windows that have an added buffer against shattering also translate to less time spent cleaning up broken glass later on. These are huge benefits as anyone who’s tried to pick up tiny shards of glass knows…or tried to pick up the pieces and order new windows following a severe earthquake.
The Lucky One Percent
In several studies testing the resilience of window film against heavy impacts, less than one percent of windows suffered appreciable damage. Keeping on that one percent number, you want to know something truly shocking?
Fewer than one percent of homes and offices around the country are equipped with shatterproof window film.
This is even more surprising in light of the fact that window film’s costs are affordable to begin with, and made even more affordable with energy-efficiency tax credits. Maybe your home could benefit from shatterproof film…
