flooring fitting question

[Tippi]

I have purchased some tongue and grove bamboo flooring. Got it delivered this afternoon. I just tried fitting a few pieces together, to my dismay they don't fit properly. Please see

the barrel distortion of my digicam)

They are to be installed by myself and friend, glued down over Regupol over concrete. Which of the following is true?

1. after a day or two they should acclimatize and fit better
2. tapping with hammer during installation will fix it
3. I got a bad product (they came in plain white boxes with no branding)

Thanks in advance!

[badgolferman]

I can't speak for bamboo flooring but I saw some of what you are seeing with laminate flooring. Yes, you should let it acclimate if the directions say so. Tapping with a hammer will make it fit better for the most part, however I don't think picture 3 would get fixed that way. You may have bad products.

Avoid locking the planks together until they are installed. You will damage or loosen the fitting and they will separate later a bit. However I did not glue my laminate flooring so I cannot say that for sure.

Bottom line is do what the instructions say as close as you can manage.

[Per Plexed]

This time of year when most of us have the heating system running in the house, there is a great need to acclimatize any natural material before installing it. The swelling / shrinking can be significant in the materials. What are those marks that look like bruising or machine made marks going across the surface of the boards? The pattern of the marks appears too regular to be natural.

Per

[SQLit]

Are you sure that the flooring is not hinged together?

You need some installation instructions, USUALLY wood like this is NEVER glued to the foundation. It is floated on top, connected/glued together but not to the structure.

[PipeDown]

The marks are indicative of bamboo, it is natural. You know how the hollow stalks have a knot every foot or so.

[Tippi]

The boards are just tongue and grove that slide together, not interlocking like some laminates. There are no instructions that came with it, but the sales person said the manufacturor has said this can be glued. I've talked to other people who said bamboo can be floated but not recommended. (The ideal is to nail it but as I live in a condo I can't put wood subfloor down on concrete, that would make the floor much too high.)

[gregpasq]

Bamboo can be floated, glued or nailed. My company (Fair Pacific Bamboo Flooring) floats bamboo in about 1/4 of our installations with no problems.

If you have standard tongue and groove planks, you would use a traditional floating method (glueing tongue to groove) with any of the variety of good floating floor adhesives on the market.

Unfortunately, what you are seeing with your planks not fitting is common with low cost planks. The milling and/or drying is not what it should be, so you end up with planks that have large gaps. Sometimes, this can be mitigated by applying pressure to the planks to bring them together while nailing or while the adhesive sets.

As far as acclimitization, up to 72 hours is recommended. That may help your situation somewhat.

Finally, if putting down over concrete, you will likely have too much moisture in the concrete for a satisfactory wood flooring installation. So you must provide a moisture barrier. Typically, this is 6 or 8 mil polyethylene sheeting, taped at the the seams and along the edges. The floor is then floated over the top. Bostik has a nice product called MVP that is a "paint-on" moisture barrier. You basically roll it on and it forms a moisture-proof membrane. You can then float your floor over it, or even glue it directly to the membrane.

I hope this helps! There is way to much bad bamboo flooring on the market - Fair Pacific is here to help correct that situation, because quality bamboo flooring planks make a very nice, very sturdy, environmentally friendly floor.

-Greg Pasquariello

[Keith Williams]

I haven't noticed my bamboo floor moving around at all, though the directions did say that acclimation was required.

Those are the bamboo nodules. This is "horizontal" bamboo. "Vertical" alignment doesn't show the nodules as much. Both are interesting, though we went with the vertical. There is more information linked off

[Keith Williams]

Interesting. I nailed ours down. We went with the 6' vertical medium-carbonized flooring from Enviro Choice:

It's great stuff, easy to install, and quite inexpensive (about the same as the mid-grade vinyl it replaced).

Interesting. I thought all of the bamboo came from the same place (China) and was pretty similar. Though, I did try to fit the stuff I bought with some a friend put down. They were quite different.

Since we put it down, we've been noticing more and more talk about the advantges of bamboo. I'm thinking about putting it in a couple more rooms (downstairs bedroom, family room, and/or living room), replacing carpeting.

[gregpasq]

Without trying to spam for Fair Pacific Bamboo, please visit the website

You'll learn why some bamboo flooring is good and why some other is junk. Even if you don't buy from us, call us and ask the questions, we'll give you the all the bamboo education you could want.

Much of what you see on the internet IS the same. Many ( if not most ) of the online flooring companies and liquidators buy their bamboo from the cheapest suppliers they can find and/or at auction. So what you end up with is low priced bamboo that does not perform well over time, or possibly high priced bamboo that is nothing more than low-priced in disguise. Often quality varies tremendously from lot to lot.

You might also notice that a lot of the online websites have suspiciously similar catalog text and pricing. Hmm.

Crummy product is the reason for the complaints you hear about bamboo... there's a lot of poor quality stuff out there. It typically has lower quality finish (despite the Klumpp brand name that you may see), may be pressed and milled on hand powered equipment, resulting in less straight milling and inconsistent construction, and may be constructed of lower quality bamboo, resulting in lots of use of filler and bad resistance to denting.

-Greg Pasquariello

[Mike Annetts]

Hello tippi

I have installed similar product and at first they did not fit together when I tried them. what I did was to temporary screw a board parallel to the flooring strips and drive a wedge (made from a piece of your flooring) between the board and your flooring product. this will force the joints tight. Once your glue is set up you can remove the wedge and temporary board. you can do this at the ends as well. Just make sure not to bugger up the tongue or groove (this is why we use a piece of the flooring itself). You can make them too tight so be careful as the seam will rise slightly and show up. Duct tape also works well. fasten it to the piece you are installing and stretch it and fasten it to the adjasent piece and it will pull the pieces together. If you have any residue use we-40 and it takes it right off.

good luck Mike