Jan
Grass - Indoor Luxury Flooring
You might think that I’m smoking it as I write this article, but I am not smoking Hawaiian Gold or taking other hallucinatory drugs. There is a grass, that is one of the most luxurious, environmentally friendly, & durable, flooring materials that you can install & you will not find it at your local nursery. You’ll find it at most flooring & DIY big box retailers.
The flooring material that I’m promoting is ‘Bamboo’. You may have thought that bamboo was a hardwood, its not! Bamboo is a species of grass & even though it’s usually sold as a flooring product by the regular hardwood flooring manufacturers, it’s definitely not a hardwood.
It is a grass that has the ability to grow to full maturity in 5 to 7 years, about 1/10th of the tme of oak or walnut, & unlike a hardwood tree, the bamboo plant isn’t killed in order to harvest its stalks. That is why using bamboo products such as flooring admits you to the group of eco-friendly renovators.
So how do we get a beautiful bamboo-flooring plank from a stalk of grass?
Subsequent to harvesting, which doesn’t kill the plant ? it is similar to pruning, the stalks are sliced into strips approximately the width of a flooring plank. There’re a few methods of manufacture but the most common process would then take the strips & steam them under pressure. The steaming process carbonizes the bamboo giving it color & eliminating any sugars & insects in the product.
At this point in the manufacturing process, the bamboo is graded in the same manner as any hardwood. Lower grade products are often sold into the market, so it’s important to purchase your bamboo flooring from a reputable retailer & manufacturer. Following grading the bamboo is kiln dried to ensure stable moisture content & then the strips are surface milled to size.
After milling the strips are glued face up for horizontal & side-by-side for vertically faced flooring. These assemblies are then hot pressed. It should be noted that lower grade bamboo flooring might use formaldehyde as part of the gluing process. This is another reason to purchase from reputable manufacturers & retailers.
Once the assemblies are hot pressed, they’re milled with a standard tongue & groove found on most hardwood flooring. Generally, bamboo flooring can not actually be integrated with other hardwoods to provide for patterns. Bamboo is usually manufactured at a thickness of 5/8′, whereas most hardwood flooring is milled to a thickness of 3/4′.
It might be noted that bamboo flooring is harder & more durable than oak flooring.
As with any home renovation project, knowledge & planning are the keys to success.
Additional information on hardwood flooring.
Home improvement, remodel & landscaping information.
