Are bamboo floors really of bad quality?

Some are, some aren't....like most things, it depends on whether one buys good material and does a quality installation.

There are all types of bamboo flooring and bamboo itself, like wood consists of many species which have different characteritics--"bamboo" is not all just "bamboo".

You need to research more about it -- there is quite a plethora of information available from flooring manufacturers, trade associations, etc., etc., etc., that discuss the various factors; I'm not going to even try to write a treatise here.

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Some are, some aren't.

We loved the (vertical) bamboo I installed in our previous house. This house (horizontal), not so much. We'll likely replace it in five years or so with hardwood, if we're still here. IOW, it's a crap-shoot.

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I am always leery of the glue they use. Bamboo is little strips of "wood" all glued together, usually in China. With so much glue used in the assembly and their propensity to use toxic materials, one never knows what is in it, what is off-gassing from the glue chemicals and the quality of the adhesive bond.

Do you mean there are some different kinds of bamboo floors ?

You had negative experience with the bad quality bamboo floors. I want to buy bamboo floor, but now I'm afraid how to choose quality bamboo floors.

ote:

Will pay attention to this . thanks !

I had both positive and negative. Evidently there is a big difference in bamboo.

You got me there. Like I said, it's a crap-shoot. I bought the bamboo for my previous house online and was very happy with it (6' vertical - medium carbonized). The floors that came in this house are junk (horizontal - light carbonized, I think). They looked like hell before we even moved in. If you look in the great room closet you can see the original color is about ten shades darker. I bet I didn't pay as much (>

With bamboo flooring, you're at the mercy of the retailer. Do your homework carefully, pick your retailer for longevity, experience and good referrals, and you should be OK ... but, like one poster said "it's a crap shoot" with this type of flooring.

The complaints I have heard (aside from unanticipated panda invasions) is that the solid bamboo floors tend to have issues with humidity cycles. One customer bought a bamboo lamination (veneer?) laid up on engineered wood planks and she is very pleased. I like the look of cork flooring but the wear factor is said to be limited.

Lots of older folks are requesting cork lately. Although it took me almost a month to do it, I recently persuaded a remodeling client to forego the 1500+ sf of cork flooring.

One of the problems, IME, was in getting a consistent float throughout the area, which included six rooms and a large hallway ... the FF to ceiling measurements in the house currently vary by almost 2" (often in the same room) and I couldn't get a bid which included demo'ing the existing, floating, and installation, which makes me suspicious that there is going to be some finger pointing in the future if one sub is not responsible for all three.

G. Jitu Bamboo floors have their place that they work well and they will FAIL miserably in other areas. I installed over 1200 sqft of bamboo form Lumber Liquidators. The material is very soft !!!!! As a key example take a normal 8 ounce glass tumber and drop in free fall onto the floor. If the bottom hits first, the floor WILL NOW HAVE A NASTY DENT !!!! Dining room chairs will dammage the floor as folks push back from the table.. Office chairs with rollers will severely rut the floor. I witness this first hand in my own home. The flooring I used is solid bamboo not the engineered laminate type. I also went with the "Hortizontal " type. This means when you look at the flooring each plank is a series of bamboo strips glued together. For bedroom use nice choice, for anywhere esle do not use this product. With regard to the information below regarding Bamboo as hard, comapred to oak, it is SUPER soft. I tore out the 50 year old oak flooring that was here. (Tearing out many walls created a nightmare to try to save the floor) The oak floor never had any of the damage issues I now have with bamboo.

Paul

"G.Jitu" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@g6g2000pro.googlegroups.com...

l and they will

Bamboo hardness is quite variable. Some is significantly harder than Oak, obviously some not. The stuff I put in my previous house was quite hard and scratch resistant. The problem we have with the floors in our current house is not so much that they're soft, but the surface scratches very easily and has faded terribly.

There is a lot of information to be found with a web search. This article proposes that the darker the carbonization the softer. That's not the whole story because our previous floors were carbonized- medium. The ones in our current house are light. Anyway, FWIW:

l and they will

ell and they will

That *is* the question.