apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The newish gym I belong to has bamboo flooring (with heavy mats on surfaces where equipment resides.) After a year and a half, the floor is definitely scratched and dented. It does look great, but every time I ascend or descend the stairs, I can't help but examine the flooring for new signs of wear. Granted, the floor sees hundreds of feet per day, but most of those feet are wearing sneakers, not hard soled shoes or heels.

I recently renovated my apartment and installed laminated bamboo flooring throughout, it's a mid colour bamboo and while reasonably inexpensive to buy [I shopped around!], it appears to be a good product. Yes, it does scratch fairly easily, but because of the visual texture, it's really not that noticeable. It's only been about 2 months, but I am very pleased so far.

There are also many easily dented, soft woods that take many more years to mature than bamboo, so I still say it's a winner. (but I do think it is an odd cchoice for a high-traffic gym...)

If the Treehugger article proves anything, it's that there is no magic eco cure-all that doesn't need to be managed or maintained. But why is that suddenly a surprise? (de)Forestation will always need policing and eco-advocates.

I posted this comment on the LA site yesterday...

Gee, and I thought it was just me! Yes, I'm finding that my bamboo floors aren't wearing as well as I would've liked. The flooring does tend to scratch and "ding" easily. Boo... Oh well, I guess I'll just break out the floor wax.

Enrique, I probably missed something, I know that something was launched for LA, but the LA AT site is now totally separate from the NY site (forgive me if this is a duh question)? I don't know if I like that. Do we need to start checking both sites so we don't miss anything good?

My partner had bamboo floors installed in his CT condo living room -- so far, we are very pleased. There are some minor scratches -- but with a 10 year old boy around, that is to be expected. It doesn't seem to be anymore more susceptible to scratching than wood floors with polyurethane coating. When one refinishes, you don't need to re-stain, as the color penetrates the entire depth of the floor.

Cass: If you have laminate flooring, you most likely have something that's just printed on tiles. "Bamboo" would wear as well as "ironwood"...

My bamboo cutting board is doing well. It's scratched, but no more than it should be at this point... Maybe bamboo is just something designers should use on short-term things, rather than floors or furniture. If IKEA gave me a choice, I'd rather have bamboo than particle board or presswood furniture... Why chop down a twenty year old tree for something that's just going in a dorm room for a couple of years?

I may be wrong, but I believe most press board/particle board/MDF to be made from lumbering by-products, so those aren't huge eco-offenders... in fact, some are great examples of reuse.

Mary: it's not printed - I bought it myself and helped install it, it's about 3/4 inch thick, you can see the bamboo layer about 1/4 inch on top and the grain is quite obvious at the ends, and then there is wood cross-grained in two layers underneath - it's got a laminate coating on top which is sort-of matt/pearl - actually reminds me of pearl photo paper finish. Really nice!

Patrick (too),

You are absolutely right!

Reef

It's true that press board/particle board/MDF is manufactured from wood byproducts, but most of it is actually very eco-offensive due to the high volumes of chemicals, solvents and adhesives involved in the processing. I actually don't know how bamboo products are processed so I can't say if they're greener or not from that standpoint, but it's something I'm going to look into.

hey people-
some homework is required when specifying bamboo floors. there is some flooring that is rather soft and there are others which are harder than oak. i believe the hardness is derived by how fast the bamboo grows - sort of like trees.

Kate - could you tell me more? I'm looking into bamboo flooring for a client's summer house. Where would I find more info on the various grades? (my e-mail:frenchie_builder@hotmail.com

I'm an owner of a bamboo flooring company in NYC and our brand of bamboo is called SILKROAD. SILKROAD is actually one of the pioneers of the whole bamboo flooring industry in North America -- we've been doing it for almost 12 years -- sold over 2 million square feet of it. The reason why some of you have had poor quality is because you purchased poor quality bamboo flooring. Not all bamboo flooring is equal or the same. The most important thing to look for when buying bamboo flooring -- or any product brand for that matter, is experience. How long has the company been around? Most companies are just importers or bamboo flooring. They buy what ever is cheap that month and bring it into the country. SILKROAD, along with very small group of like companies in this country, actually sell and are involved in our own brand of bamboo flooring from start to finish. If you buy bamboo flooring for $1.99 or some crazy low price, you WILL be dissatisfied, or if the company has no history. Our clients rave about our products. It's a whole other world on this side of the fence. All you have to do is your research and remember that you get what you pay for. Feel free to check us out at SILKROADNY.COM

I've got bamboo floors in - have had them for a year now and they are totally unmarked - exactly like the day we put them in. Having said that, we've got cream carpets throughout the rest of the house and so we always take our shoes off indoors - perhaps this is the secret to long lasting floors!

I have bamboo flooring installed in the entire house. It looks absolutely beautiful but just like hardwood flooring it will scratch and dent. The texture tends to hide some of the scratching. Part of the charm of real wood or bamboo is that it looks natural, scratches and all, unlike laminate such as Pergo which looks and feels artificial.

I bought carbonized horizontal bamboo flooring for my kitchen recently. It scratches and dents very easily. The problem is the scratch is in the finish, and it shows up bright white and is difficult to touch up. I found the best solution is a cherry stain followed by polyurethane applied with a small watercolor brush. But I purchased bamboo thinking it would be easy care. Alas. Also, in terms of eco, shipping the stuff all the way from China certainly puts a dent in its eco-friendliness. I'm kinda wishing I went with the Forbo linoleum...

A little info about how bamboo grows may be helpful. It normally grows to full height in 6-8 weeks. The shoots emerge from the ground at the full diameter that the mature culms (canes) will have. The culms live ~5-10 years depending on the variety. During their lifespan they take up silica (I think it's silica) and become much harder. A one year old culm is not hard enough for flooring but it is very useful for paper pulp. In China bamboo is widely used for paper pulp and now for fabric. I suspect that some of the bamboo that is being used for flooring was harvested much too soon and as a result is too soft. Maybe the poster from silkroadny will comment on this guess of mine.

cant find the article you wrote about whether babmboo is being ecologically sourced, or if rainforests being cut down etc to plant it?

Hi,
I am thinking of getting carbonised bamboo flooring in my kitchen, but I have a large St Bernard dog.. am I crazy?
(could I make him wear socks?!)

Please advise!

Bamboo in itself is a sustainable resource.

But what about the fact that it comes from China?
The idea of using hundreds of thousands of gallons of
petroleum to get it here boggles my mind.
Definitely not carbon neutral.

Does Florida have a bamboo industry? I grew up there
and bamboo was everywhere. I would think this would
be a better option to explore. Florida could use some
sustainable industry.

I had my bamboo floors installed a month ago, and if I had it to do again, I would have chosen another product. I did my homework on the product and was impressed by the statistics for hardness and how it compared to hardwood. I used to have oak parquet in the kitchen, and while it could also dent and scratch, it was nothing like the bamboo. Everytime anyone puts anything on the floor, or moves anything across it, there's another gouge and/or scratch. I read some postings at another site which said the bamboo was so soft a natural fingernail could scratch it. I tried on one of my extra boards and low and behold, just running my nail across it against the gain did indeed create a white scratch. Perhaps there are some products that are better than others, but my advice would be to get a sample board, and then experiment with it to see how easy it is to damage. After spending $7,000 to get these floors installed I am seriously thinking of having them pulled and putting something less fragile in. I can't stand the constant stress of finding more scratches and dents in the floor. Stay away from this product!!ry mo

Out in Seattle there is a great company that makes a commericial grade bamboo flooring that I hear is very hard and wears very well. Look at www.teragren.com and look for thier "Synergy" product line. My wife and I just bought a new house and we are considering this product for the kitchen--and we have 2 children below age 5, so this floor HAS to wear well.

Ikea has the KVIST engineered floated bamboo. I bought a box to take home and see how durable it is, being as it is a 1/4 inch veneer of bamboo and I imagined from everything I read that it would scratch quite easily.

Well first off, in the display's at ikea, they have it in two "rooms", and for the amount of traffic that place gets i was shocked at how relatively little it was scratched.

So i went to both home depot and Lowes to check the hardness of the engineered hardwoods and the 3/4 inch bamboo at Lowes.

I used my car key on 3 purchased sample squares and found that they all scratched equally as much as the Ikea Kvist. However the 3/4 inch Bamboo actually gouged and left that "white line" Now granted this was "only" 3.50 sq/ft bamboo, but all of the egineered hardwoods and Ikea bamboo held up better.

We installed bamboo flooring throughout our house during a remodel 6 years ago. Upstairs is horizontal in a natural finish. Downstairs in vertical grain, carbonized. All of it was finished onsite (as opposed to installing pre-finished flooring).

I love the look but would never install bamboo again. I can't believe how easily this product gouges and dents. We have a labrador retriever so I'm sure our floor gets more abuse than others but still...it drives me crazy how badly this floor looks after such a short period of time. I'm considering pulling it out and installing tile instead.

Hi, I'm very happy to meet you here talking about bamboo floor. I was the manufacturer of bamboo floor in China, I have been working with bamboo floor about 20 years. I was the developer and eyewitness of bamboo floor from zero to the level today. Initially, we could only make vertical bamboo floor plank without tongue-groove, because there was no any machine which could four-side plane bamboo strips, only two-side, and we couldn't afford very expesive tongue-groove machine, of couse the plank was not pre-finished like today. Around 1990, with the strips' four-side planer and special two sides press were invented, the horizontal plank was born. The dimension of bamboo floor today was designed basicly with 960x96x15mm (a few with 920x92x15 or 915x91.5x15), is based on bamboo property(the only species to make floor, its scientific name: Phyllostachys pubescens), the length with 1 meter (bamboo pole) which is finally 960mm on plank is most economic, because the thickness of the pole's wall gradually gets thinner from bottom to top, within 1 meter this change is not so big, if to make the plank shorter than 1 meter, the more waste ends (i.e. from 1 meter to 960mm, there is 40mm waste) have. Secondly, the width (horizontal) is based on five pieces of strips, if more than 5pcs. (the highest material utilized width of bamboo strips is 20mm), the plank will be possiblely wrap along wide side, this is unacceptable, it is endurably the plank bending along long side. Third, the average thickness of bamboo strips is 5mm, four or more layers will not ecomomic, two layers is too thin. Based on these characteristic, bamboo floor is designed to today's dimension. Actually, the width and thickness of vertical bamboo floor may different from horizontal, and it will not effect the rate of material utilized, but people like to make same dimension of bamboo floor, so the vertical and horizontal are same dimension. In the production, the cost of vertical is higher than horizontal, because we can put some defect strips in middle and bottom layers. For the horizontal floor the most economice size today is 960x96x15, because it is the highest rate of material utilized. To be continued...

Talk back about bamboo, there are more than 1000 species of bamboo in the world, most of them are distributed between 15º~35º latitude in the north and south. Till now, only one species, “Moso”, its scientific name is Phyllostachys pubescens, was used to make laminated bamboo which eventually became bamboo products, such as floor, panel etc., this is because Moso has big enough diameter (we have to use the diameter more than 90mm, otherwise more waste), quality of the material, and the abundant resource. Although there are a few other species in the world as big as or bigger than Moso, such as , which distribute in tropic area (south Asia, south American and Africa), but due to the quality of their materials (too soft, their densities are between, and the nodes of these species are too large), and the mismanagement of their production, they are hardly to be used for industrialized bamboo products now.

China has about 3 millions ha. Of Moso, which distributes in south of Yangtse river, mostly in Hunan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei provinces. Moso forest in the same area is alternative one year growing baby bamboo, one year harvesting in China, basically Moso is harvested either with 6 years old or 8 years old in China. Each year there are about 400 millions ( 2/3 of total harvested) of bamboo poles can be used for bamboo industrial products, such as floor, panel, plybamboo board, etc.. In China, the government has been paying attention to bamboo production for a long time, almost each bamboo farmer knows how to grow and harvest reasonablely, it should say China has the best management for such huge bamboo forest in the world.

(Update)
Talk back about bamboo, there are more than 1000 species of bamboo in the world, most of them are distributed between 15º~35º latitude in the north and south. Till now, only one species, “Moso”, its scientific name is Phyllostachys pubescens, was used to make laminated bamboo which eventually became bamboo products, such as floor, panel etc., this is because Moso has big enough diameter (we have to use the diameter more than 90mm, otherwise more waste), quality of the material (density 0.66g/cm3), and the abundant resource. Although there are a few other species in the world as big as or bigger than Moso, such as Dendrocalamus latiflorus , Dendrocalamus asper, Dendrocalamus giganteus, etc., the density of these species is around 0.5g/ cm3 , which distribute in tropic area (south Asia, south American and Africa), but due to the quality of their materials (too soft, their densities are between, and the nodes of these species are too large), and the mismanagement of their production, they are hardly to be used for industrialized bamboo products now.

China has about 3 millions ha. Of Moso, which distributes in south of Yangtse river, mostly in Hunan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei provinces. Moso forest in the same area is alternative one year growing baby bamboo, one year harvesting in China, basically Moso is harvested either with 6 years old or 8 years old in China. Each year there are about 400 millions ( 2/3 of total harvested) of bamboo poles can be used for bamboo industrial products, such as floor, panel, plybamboo board, etc.. In China, the government has been paying attention to bamboo production for a long time, almost each bamboo farmer knows how to grow and harvest reasonablely, it should say China has the best management for such huge bamboo forest in the world. To be continued

I know this is about bamboo - but in terms of eco flooring, mesquite is supposed to be amazing. It's a very hard wood and is renewable. Perhaps people who don't like bamboo floors should look at American mesquite floors.

Oh how I loved the look of my natural vertical bamboo the first day it was installed. Then on Day 2, I notice the first scratch— where I'd dropped a pen. Two weeks later, it was completely scratched, AND warping. I did my homework: chose a product with a 25 year "warranty", acclimated it in my apartment for two weeks ( as opposed to the 72 hours recommended.) I made sure that it could be glued on a sub floor and made sure my contractor used a vapor barrier. I repeatedly asked the company whether it would hold up well in my first floor apartment.

It's been a year since I installed it and it's a complete mess. I'm going to have to rip it out and start over. PAINFULLY un-green and wasteful!!

It seems there is waaaay too much disparity in products and industry standards that no matter what the cost, bamboo is an unreliable choice at best. I say, Bam-BOOO!!