Emergency board-up and glass replacement in Phoenix
We board up broken commercial openings after a break-in, a vehicle strike or storm damage, and we replace the glass once it’s fabricated. Board-up and replacement are two separate visits, because the board goes on today and commercial glass is made to your opening.
We take after-hours calls for commercial emergencies. Regular hours are Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm.
Do these three things before we get there
They matter more than most people expect, and two of them are hard to undo once you’ve got them wrong.
- Photograph everything before anything moves. Wide shots of the opening, close shots of the damage, and the surrounding area. Timestamped if your phone does that.
- Leave the broken glass and damaged framing where it is. Commercial property policies typically require damaged property to be set aside and kept available for examination. A storefront that’s already been swept and skipped is harder to claim than a documented one.
- Get a police report number if it was a break-in or vandalism. Policies usually require you to notify police when a law may have been broken.
Why the board-up is normally a covered cost
Standard commercial property policies put a duty on you to take reasonable steps to protect the property from further damage after a loss, and to keep a record of what those steps cost, including hours and wages. That duty is the reason board-up is generally treated as a covered mitigation expense rather than money you absorb.
It cuts the other way too. Leaving an opening unsecured overnight when you could have secured it is the kind of thing that gets raised when a second loss follows the first.
We invoice board-up itemized, with labor hours shown separately, because that’s the form adjusters ask for. Your policy and your adjuster decide what’s covered, not us.
What a board-up involves
Loose glazing comes out of the frame first, because a board fixed over broken glass still leaves glass in the opening. Then panel is cut to the opening and secured to the frame or through-bolted to interior bracing, depending on what the frame will take. The perimeter gets sealed so the building isn’t open to weather and dust.
A board-up is temporary and it looks temporary. It is not a security system, and it will not stop someone determined. What it does is close the opening, protect the interior, and stop the loss growing while the glass is made.
Why the glass takes longer than the board
Commercial glass is cut to your opening, and tempered glass cannot be cut, drilled or notched after it has been tempered. The heat treatment puts the surfaces in compression and the core in tension, and cutting into that releases the whole lite at once. Every hole, notch and edge is finished while the glass is still annealed, before it goes through the furnace.
So there is no trimming a lite down on site, and a mis-measured piece is a re-order rather than an adjustment. Insulated units add fabrication steps on top of that, and laminated units add an interlayer and an autoclave cycle.
The exceptions are hardware and stock sliding door glass, which are standard parts and can often be handled on the first visit.
Monsoon damage
Arizona’s monsoon season runs 15 June to 30 September, and the glass losses in it come from wind rather than rain. Microbursts are the specific hazard: a collapsing column of air under a thunderstorm, usually less than two and a half miles across, lasting three to five minutes, with winds that can reach 100 miles an hour before it’s over.
That’s a short, violent, extremely local event, which is why one building loses three lites and the one across the street loses none. Haboobs bring the other half of it, driving debris and grit at the glass at speed.
If you’re in a corridor that catches wind, the conversation worth having is about what glass goes back in, not just how fast. Laminated glass holds together in the frame when it breaks instead of coming out of the opening, and for some buildings that’s the difference between a board-up and a board-up plus an interior clean-up.
Break-in damage
Tempered glass in a storefront or an entry door dices into small pieces when it goes, which is what it’s designed to do and also why the whole opening empties in one go. There is rarely a partial break to patch.
If the same opening has now been hit twice, that’s worth treating as a design question rather than a repair. Laminated glass is much harder to get through in a hurry, because the interlayer keeps holding after the glass has cracked.
Our warranty
Replacement glass and installation carry a lifetime limited warranty on our workmanship, for as long as you own the property.
Common questions
Who boards up a broken storefront in Phoenix?
We do. Call (602) 777-3717 with the address and what’s broken. We take after-hours calls for commercial emergencies.
Should I clean up the broken glass before you arrive?
No. Photograph it and leave it. Your policy most likely requires damaged property to be kept available for the adjuster to examine, and clearing it first makes the claim harder.
Will my insurance cover the board-up?
Usually, because commercial policies place a duty on you to protect the property from further damage and to record what that cost. Your adjuster makes the call. We invoice itemized with labor hours shown so you have what they ask for.
Can you replace the glass the same day?
Only if it’s hardware or stock sliding door glass. Custom commercial lites are fabricated to your measurement and tempered glass can’t be cut afterwards, so the board goes on now and the glass follows.
How secure is a board-up?
It closes the opening and keeps weather and dust out. It is not a security system and it will not stop someone determined to get in.
The same window keeps getting broken. What are my options?
Laminated glass. It cracks but the interlayer holds it together, so it stays in the frame and takes much longer to get through. We’ll quote it against tempered when we measure.
Call it in
Call (602) 777-3717 with the property address and what happened. Photograph the damage first, and leave the broken glass in place. See commercial glass for how quotes and deposits work.
