Bamboo Flooring For Home and Office

Bamboo Flooring

... for the home and office

FloorMall is well aware of the challenges and dangers facing our planet. That’s why we’ve dedicated ourselves to providing our customers with the very best in green flooring options. We want to stress that going green in their homes or their workplaces shouldn’t be associated with settling for lesser quality. In order to showcase this point I decided to provide some information on a popular eco-friendly flooring option. .

Bamboo is a woody plant that has become very popular for use in hardwood flooring. It is the fastest growing woody plant in the world and is actually considered a grass. At its optimal growth rate it can grow over 24 inches in a single day. It takes bamboo only four to seven years to reach maturity. Bamboo's expedient growth rate has lead to it becoming one of the most important plants in the world. And now bamboo is changing the way people buy and sell green flooring.

It is true that bamboo flooring comes from a renewable resource but to qualify as “green” it still has to be produced in an appropriate manner. Bamboo grows to its full height and thickness in about four months. The change that the bamboo undergoes afterward is a hardening process. Some manufacturers will harvest their bamboo prematurely to increase the turn over of their profits. You’ll see this often with cheap bamboo flooring. It will be of very low quality and no where as durable as the bamboo flooring that we sell here. On top of that, because the bamboo is so soft an excess of formaldehyde is often used in order to compensate. Formaldehyde is an adhesive and a volatile organic compound(VOC) which has often been linked with cancer. All of the green flooring products on our site are VOCs compliant, meaning that they contain little or no volatile organic compounds. They also come from manufacturers that practice responsible harvesting practices as to not disturb natural habitats.

Before bamboo can be made into flooring it has to be harvested and then cut and boiled. The boiling gets rid of the sugar content in the bamboo which would attract bugs and molds. Then the bamboo can be steamed in the darkening/coloring process known as carbonization or left for natural coloring. From here the bamboo is dried in order to remove excess moisture which could cause warping. Then the pieces are combined with adhesives and extreme pressure and then cut into the desired sized planks. This entire process produces about 60% of “waste” and from this waste we get strand-woven bamboo.

Strand-woven bamboo is made by taking these excess bamboo fibers and fusing them into one homogenous sheet using environmentally safe adhesives and tons of pressure. But what's the difference between regular bamboo flooring and strand-woven bamboo? Bamboo produced in the traditional way will have a hardness of about red oak, which is one of the softer trade woods. With strand-woven bamboo flooring you get flooring that is actually 154% stronger than red oak and 126% stronger than North American maple. This places the hardness of strand-woven bamboo near the extremely hard, exotic hard woods like Brazilian walnut and Ipe. Bamboo grows much faster than these woods and actually costs less as well. Strand-woven bamboo is strong enough to stand up to the rigors associated with commercial environments, giving business owners the option of going green without sacrificing durability.

LEED certification is an added benefit of including green flooring in commercial buildings. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and they’re a rating system that determines how “green” a building is. They also provide guidance and framework for each step along the way including: design, construction, operations and maintenance. Becoming LEED certified may be expensive initially but building owners will save more down the line because they’re structure is more efficient. And on top of that, LEED certification can lead to tax exemptions, depending on the state. There are plenty of great reasons to go green in the workplace and the home; and the most important reason of all is to help preserve our earth for our children and our children’s children. FloorMall is proud to do our part in achieving this goal and we hope you will as well.

Reasons To Shop at Floormall.com