Bamboo Parquet is A Good Alternative to Wood Flooring
Posted on 2018-2-2 8:51:49
Bamboo parquet is a good alternative to wood flooring: it is robust, durable and can be combined with underfloor heating.
The wood, especially compared to concrete, if managed with the appropriate criteria and standards is a material very sustainable. It is also lightweight, flexible, easy to find, workable, with good structural behavior and an insulator that can guarantee the right temperature depending on the season. For these reasons, more and more people decide to adopt it for the floors of their homes. But are there more ecological alternatives to hardwood? To assess the sustainability of this type of flooring (but not only), one must take into account at least three factors: the raw material used, the production process and product life expectancy.
Bamboo floor coverings have been used in countries where it has been growing since ancient times.
Modern floors made of bamboo are made in the form of a coating of massive boards and in the form of parquet. Floor skins produce skirting boards made of bamboo.
Both these types of flooring from bamboo are easy to install, have antistatic properties, are durable. They can be given different shades, so the buyer can choose according to their tastes. Bamboo floor can also be painted with paints, which are used for wooden floors.
The floor of bamboo is more durable than wood because of its high hardness and density (770 kg / m3). It does not dry up and does not swell. Slots between massive boards or planks of parquet do not appear.
The disadvantage of bamboo floors is the difficulty of their bending due to the structure of the fibers.
The thermal conductivity of bamboo floors is slightly lower than that of wood. Walking on it and sitting on it will be more comfortable even in an uneventful period in the off-season.
Technologies
The two main types of bamboo floors, more precisely, coverings are horizontal (flat) and vertical.
In the horizontal type in boards and planks, the thin stems of the bamboo stem are joined in a horizontal position by the method of machine pressing. If you look at such a coating from above, the pattern of the inter-knots of the plant is quite clearly visible.
In the vertical type in boards and planks, the stems obtained from the stems are glued vertically. On them the drawing of knots is almost not visible.
Consumers and producers of floor coverings made of bamboo began to give preference to the vertical type in the ligature with its greater resistance to mechanical influences.
The two main types of colors are natural and caramel. Natural color is similar to the color of maple wood, and caramel is like dark amber or wood of young teak. Caramel color is obtained not in the process of staining, but also at the stage of pressing the boards. Then the result of heating the sugary substances in the bamboo darken (caramel is also obtained from sugar by heating).
In some countries in the countries of growth of bamboo floors are made in the old fashion from narrow bamboo slats of different length. These strips are obtained by cutting thick trunks. Of the short strips, the parquet is laid in the same way as from wood parquet boards. Of the long bars do shields, which then put on a solid foundation.
But making such floors is very laborious. It requires exact dimensions of the boards and a good fit when laying them. And to find long straight bars is even more difficult because for this, it is necessary to select straight trunks.
Because of this, shields made of natural slats and boards are more often used for suspended ceilings.
Of bamboo racks, a floor covering is made, which is called a carpet, although it, unlike ordinary carpets, is semi-rigid. Reiki are mounted on a sturdy special fabric with an anti-slip bottom surface.
The natural tone of these carpets is neutral, it is suitable for any interior. Such a carpet can be put on the floor, and you can decorate the walls as wallpaper.
Some technical specifications
The specific gravity of dry bamboo is 0.72 g/cc - approximately like that of oak. Abrasion resistance (ability to resist abrasion) is one of the highest among other materials for floors.
The coefficient of thermal expansion of bamboo is 50% less than that of red oak. Bamboo floorboards and parquet do not significantly change their size when changing the temperature in the apartment.
