What is a Re-Glaze?

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Oftentimes the maintenance of a sliding glass door is put off for far too long.

Rollers are not changed in a timely fashion, resulting in a sliding glass door that's not rolling as easily as it should. The sliding door panel is actually sliding on the bottom track instead of rolling as it was designed. This can be caused by a number of things. Most often it is caused by worn-out rollers in the bottom of the rolling panel. Another cause for hard-to-roll sliding doors could be header sag. Nonetheless, when a sliding glass door isn't rolling the way it should, it becomes hard to slide. 

So this is what happens: you grab the handle of the sliding door and you pull extra hard to get it to open and close. Because the door is not sliding the way it's supposed to, it puts extra pressure on the handle and the rail that the handle is attached to. This rail is called the lead rail. This extra force on the lead rail will cause the lead rail to pull away from the glass.

If you look closely at your sliding glass door panel you will notice there is a piece of rubber that goes around the glass. The rubber that goes around the glass is called glazing vinyl and protects the edge of the glass. This glazing vinyl goes between the glass and the metal frame of the door. When the frame of the door is pulled away from the glass, the glazing vinyl will come off of the glass edge, which leaves the glass exposed and the edge of the glass unprotected. The only way to put the protective rubber vinyl back where it belongs is to pull the rails completely off the glass, put the rubber glazing vinyl back over the glass edge and then reassemble the door panel. This is called a re-glaze.