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Bamboo Flooring | Bamboo Floors
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Bamboo flooring provides a beautiful, sturdy type of flooring which is also environmentally friendly.
With everyone realizing the need to conserve our natural resources and the deforestation of old growth hardwood forests harvested to create hardwood flooring, more and more home owners are turning to bamboo as an alternative flooring material.
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Environmentally Friendly Bamboo Flooring
Bamboo flooring is not actually made from wood. Bamboo is a type of grass which grows in tall, hard stalks with delicate branches containing leaves. Bamboo grows rapidly, so harvested areas quickly replenish themselves. In fact, bamboo grows from rhizomes, spreading from existing plants meaning that no replanting is required. The new bamboo shoots turn into mature plants in only three years, making bamboo the perfect eco-friendly material for flooring modern homes.
Bamboo flooring has all the attributes of wood flooring, including rich wood shades, strong surfaces, minimal care requirements, tongue-and-groove design for easy installation, and extremely long life expectancy. The finish and laminating processes used to create bamboo flooring ensures that, once installed in the home, the emission of gases and other odors, known as "out-gassing" associated with many other types of new flooring is at the extreme low end of the scale.
How does a bamboo stalk become beautiful bamboo flooring? First the round hollow stalks are cut. Next these are sliced to form strips. A process of immersion in boiling water removes the starch from the bamboo, preparing it for drying so that it can be laminated into boards, usually by application of urea-formaldehyde adhesive in as small amounts as possible to limit out-gassing time. The resultant boards are treated with preservatives or in some cases it is treated prior to lamination.
Boric acid, a preservative with a low toxicity level, is chosen by many bamboo flooring manufacturers as the preservative of choice, in keeping with the eco-friendliness of bamboo products. When light color is desired in flooring, the boards are simply cut to size. If a darker finish is desired, pressure steaming is used to cause carbonization, creating a rich amber or brownish color.
Bamboo flooring is as hard as most hardwood flooring products too. The hardness is comparable to that of red oak. A huge beneficial difference, however, is that moisture content is less resulting in fewer changes in dimension due to moisture.
Bamboo floors are created mainly from bamboo harvested from the "bamboo sea" in southern China. In the province of Hunan, huge bamboo forests grow on land owned by the Chinese government and private contractors can obtain licenses to harvest bamboo. Only fully mature bamboo harvesting is permitted. Recently, some bamboo has begun to be imported from Vietnam which also has vast constantly-replenishing bamboo forests.
If you want an environmentally friendly flooring solution, bamboo flooring may be just right for your home. You'll enjoy beauty and durability at prices comparable to hard wood flooring which requires centuries to replenish. With bamboo flooring available, no one but you has to know that the bamboo flooring really isn't hard wood flooring unless you choose to share your little secret.
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