Bamboo Flooring: The Grass is Tougher…

Bamboo is rapidly gaining reputation for uses as household and commercial flooring.

What happens after harvesting. Even if some of you find it odd to think of bamboo as a type of grass which serves as a strong flooring surface, this choice becomes more popular every day. Bamboo flooring also attractive, long lasting and environmentally friendly. This plant is very well adapted to its environment, unaffected by poor soil quality and other outside influences. Furthermore, bamboo is a very renewable resource and it is perhaps the “greenest” flooring of flooring materials.

After the bamboo is harvested, the green outer skin of the bamboo is removed, the bamboo stalk is cut lengthwise into strips or “fillets” which are milled along their outer edges to make a flat strip. Those flat strips are kiln dried to remove the bamboo’s natural moisture. The next step is boiling the bamboo for two purposes. By removing starch and sugar, the bamboo flooring is rendered unattractive to termites. In conclusion, this bamboo flooring is a very suitable material for certain geographical areas. Bamboo flooring is also less prone to expanding and contracting due to climate changes. The second reason for boiling the bamboo is for aesthetic purposes.

Carbonized Bamboo

The material turns a darker color than its natural blonde appearance if the bamboo is boiled for a long period of time. “Carbonized” bamboo, along with the light-blonde color of the earlier stages in the process, works with any decorating scheme. In the manufacturing process, different surface patterns in bamboo flooring are created.

Horizontal and Vertical Styles of Bamboo Flooring

The bamboo strips are boiled, kiln dried, and glued together into one of two styles. The purpose is making the flooring pattern an attractive bamboo edge grain with thin lines between the laminated strips, style called “vertical style.” The bamboo strips can also be glued along their narrow edge. In this style, the strips would also be laminated in three layers, with the wider flat surface of the bamboo strip showing on top, this being called the “horizontal style”. The natural growth rings of the stalk, known as “knuckles”, are visible in a randomly scattered appearance on the floor’s surface. Both these styles of bamboo flooring receive a final pressing after lamination to ensure their structural integrity before proceeding to the final steps. They both are available in blonde or carbonized coloring.

Strand-Woven Bamboo Flooring

“Strand-woven” bamboo flooring is made from excess strands trimmed at the stage of milling the curved bamboo fillets. This style of bamboo floor is another environmentally friendly responsible feature. The great news is that nothing is wasted in the manufacturing of this flooring. Bamboo innovators discovered these long, thin strands of bamboo in order to create a stunning pattern. Strand-woven bamboo is created in a process that compresses the strands with an environmentally safe resin into a new piece of “timber” which is:

• Scratch resistant
• UV resistant
• Moisture resistant

Bamboo timber is an uniquely attractive strand-woven bamboo pattern which is made of a strong material sawn into attractive planks. Since strand-woven bamboo is already compressed at extremely high pressure at the timber-making stage, it does not receive the final pressing applied to horizontal- and vertical-style bamboo.

Final Stages in Making Bamboo Flooring

All three types of bamboo flooring boards are milled and finished in order to finish the process of producing refined flooring products. With precision milling, the tongue-and-groove connection on each bamboo flooring board ensures the snug fit and smooth surface that you expect from high quality products. The coating that finishes your bamboo flooring will also enhance its natural beauty and provide an extra-level of protection. Six coats of aluminum oxide are used in order to finish a quality product. This way, the bamboo floor will have even more protection against surface damage.

The conclusion is that a common grass can be turned into an exceptionally attractive and durable flooring. Bamboo flooring is stunning, strong and environmentally friendly. This flooring option is as a perfect alternative to traditional hardwood flooring.