Heavy enough that two people move it. Tempered glass runs roughly five pounds per square foot at three eighths of an inch and about six and a half at half inch, so a typical frameless shower door lands somewhere near sixty to eighty pounds, and a large fixed panel can pass a hundred.
Weight is not trivia on a frameless job, it drives three decisions. It decides how many hinges the door needs and how they have to be rated. It decides what the wall behind those hinges must be, since the whole load lands on a few anchor points instead of spreading through a metal frame. And it decides how the panel gets carried into the house, up the stairs and around the vanity without touching a corner on anything, because tempered glass tolerates a great deal of pressure on the face and almost none on an edge.
Two things: area and thickness. Area is the bigger lever, since doubling the size of a panel doubles the load, while stepping from three eighths to half inch adds roughly a third. A tall door in a room with nine foot ceilings weighs more than the same width door at standard height, and a fixed panel spanning a walk in opening is usually the heaviest single piece in the bathroom. Hinge cutouts, notches and holes take a little back off, but never enough to plan around. A quick way to picture it: a door about two feet wide and six feet tall is roughly twelve square feet of glass, which is where that sixty pound figure comes from. Run the same arithmetic on a fixed panel three feet wide and over six feet tall and the number climbs quickly.
A panel that size has no give in it. There is no frame to grab, the polished edges are slick, and once it starts to go there is no catching it one handed. Crews carry glass upright on suction cups, one person a side, and walk it into the opening together while another set of hands works the shims. That is also the honest reason a frameless door is not a weekend project. The glass is fabricated to final size before it ever reaches the house, so a panel dropped or chipped on an edge is not repairable, it is reordered.
Yes, as long as the hinges land on framing. Two or three anchor points carry the whole panel, so they have to hit studs or blocking installed behind the backer board. On a remodel that gets planned at framing stage. On an existing wall it is worked out during the measure, so hinge positions and stud positions agree before any glass is ordered.
It does, and that is most of why people choose it. Half inch has less flex across a wide panel, so the door travels as one piece and closes with a heavier, quieter action. Three eighths is perfectly rigid at ordinary door sizes. The difference shows on tall doors, wide fixed panels, and anywhere glass is unsupported over a long span.
Nobody at this shop hands a homeowner one end of a tempered panel. Our own installers carry and set every piece, and the free in-home measure comes first, so the glass that arrives already suits the opening, the hinge side, and the stairs it has to travel.
