Is Bamboo Flooring What You Need In Your Home?
Every week of every year, we lose a million acres of forest around the world. That's a pretty alarming figure that's making many people rething what they buy and use. After all, wood is an important resource.
A tree sixty feet long can take as many years to be replaced once it's been cut down - forests aren't renewing themselves quickly enough to meet demand. By comparison, a piece of sixty foot bamboo can be replaced on a bamboo farm in just sixty days. One of the planet's fastest growing plants, bamboo is an excellent substitute for wood in many uses.
If you use it correctly, bamboo can be just as strong as steel - it even works as rebar in concrete, allowing steel to be used for other things. Bamboo's a great choice for flooring, as well. Many trees that might have ended up as laminate and hardwood floors can be saved by using bamboo instead.
Bamboo flooring is just as easy to clean as wood and feels a lot like it. It's also unlikely to harbor allergens that might bother sensitive people, warm and natural in look and feel, and simple to install in most cases. Bamboo also has a lot of benefits you won't get with wood, like its special look and sustainability.
Most bamboo flooring is what's called compressed bamboo, though veneered laminate flooring is also on the market. The majority comes pre-finished and is ready to install right out of the package, with many versatile installation options. Make sure you know what you're buying and what you'll need for installation before you dive in.
Make sure you learn a little bit about the flooring you buy, since not all bamboo is as sustainable as it could be. When bamboo is grown properly, it doesn't need much in the way of chemical fertilizer or pesticides. Not every grower takes the time and effort to grow it the right way, however.
Another thing that can affect the quality and sustainability of bamboo flooring is the way it's manufactured. Bamboo that's not up to grade, has been grown as a monoculture, or is put together with toxic glues can be unhealthy to have in your house, unsustainable to produce, and may wear out more quickly.
If you want a new floor for your home, however, and having a low impact on the environment is a real priority, you can't do much better than bamboo. Growing it reduces carbon dioxide in the air, properly produced crops reduce erosion, and this crop can even remove toxins from polluted soil. Plus, it grows so much faster than wood.
Many different colors and styles are available, depending on how they're made and what treatments are applied. This allows just about everyone to find the color and look of bamboo that's perfect for their needs. Remember that darker floors are softer, and can't take as much damage, but still perform just fine under most circumstances.
If you're on the market for a good floor that offers everything you want out of wood, plus an environmentally friendly, sustainable method of growth and harvest, bamboo might be just the thing. It's beautiful, and it could answer many of your questions.
While hardwood flooring has always been popular in Australia, bamboo floors are now starting to take market share, due to a range of great reasons. Visit Bamboozle in Perth to learn more.
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