Aug 29th, 2010 | Written by stephenh | Posted in Home Improvement |

Bamboo Flooring

If one were to ask a designer about flooring, they may go on and on about how beautiful hardwood floors are. Beech wood and oak wood are usually the hard wood flooring of choice when creating a room suitable for royalty. But recently, the hot new ticket for many contractors and home builders, is bamboo flooring. Bamboo flooring provides benefits and beauty that can equal the attributes of beech wood and oak wood floors.

Bamboo flooring is also a safer bet for the environment. Hardwoods, such as oak can take decades of growth until maturity, where bamboo only requires five years of growth to qualify for use in flooring your home. When a product such as oak wood or beech wood is in such demand, the harvesting of such a plant can be devastating to the environment, as it takes most hard woods so long to grow. But bamboo does not even require replanting once it is harvested, because bamboo has roots that will naturally cause the plant to keep growing on it’s own. Another benefit of bamboo flooring is the price, it is much less expensive than your average hardwood flooring. And yet another benefit of bamboo flooring is the treatment process: Bamboo can be treated, through carbonization, to look very close to regular hardwood flooring. There is also engineered bamboo flooring for extra durability.

Installation of a bamboo floor requires little preparation. However, it is necessary to make sure that the bamboo flooring is installed in locations of your house or apartment that remain relatively dry. Therefore, the bathroom is not a good place for bamboo flooring, due to the constant exposure to moisture, the bamboo may shrink a little. Any area of your home that has very little exposure to moisture and is out of direct sunlight are the most optimal places to install bamboo flooring. The installation of bamboo flooring requires a few different moldings. These moldings will cover up expansions of the wood, and also serve as a buffer around other surfaces. When the bamboo flooring is set and ready to be tapped in, you will also want a tool called a tapping block for that purpose, because when installing bamboo flooring it is better to not make undesired contact with the wood.

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