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Not all bamboo flooring is the same. Avoid problems! Make sure that your bamboo flooring is well-manufactured
The Bamboo flooring market has recently been flooded with poorly-manufactured material. Where there were a handful of manufacturers 5 years ago, there are now dozens. Bamboo is a high-performance flooring product, but only if it is well-made by an experienced manufacturer using quality raw material, adhesives, and milling equipment.
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What to Look for in Quality Bamboo Flooring
Raw Material Many Bamboo flooring mills purchase immature Bamboo stalks, and do not take the time and care required to dry the raw Bamboo properly. Our supplier's mill uses only top-quality mature stalks, and then painstakingly processes the Bamboo with methods proven through years of research and experience. Careful oversight throughout the process ensures optimum performance.
Adhesives Many mills use poor-quality adhesives, often-made right there at the mill. Our supplier uses only European-made adhesives. The glues used by many manufacturers also contain high levels of urea-formaldehyde, which off-gases in the home. Our Bamboo flooring is made with a Low-VOC adhesive that falls far below the strict European E1 standard for indoor air quality.
Milling/Equipment Many Bamboo importers source their flooring from a variety of smaller mills that use outdated equipment for cutting and laminating. Our Bamboo flooring comes from just one mill that uses new, state-of-the-art German machinery. Look at the end of a cut sample of Horizontal Grain Bamboo. With most brands, you will see small splits or gaps between the individual strips of Bamboo that have either been filled with adhesive or left as is. Some of the individual strips are not cut into perfect rectangles. With our Bamboo flooring, all of the strips are cut perfectly and laminated tightly together, ensuring maximum adhesion and minimum opportunity for movement and delamination. Our Bamboo flooring adhered to the following milling tolerances: width +/- 0.1mm, length +/- 1mm, thickness +/- 0.1mm.
Drying - Most Bamboo flooring mills only kiln-dry their material down to 9-10% moisture content, which makes the flooring unreliable for use in dry climates and areas with significant seasonal humidity fluctuations. Our Bamboo flooring is dried down to 6%, making it more stable and suitable for a wide range of climates.
Lengths Bamboo mills sort their raw material, reserving the best pieces for their longer-length planks. Most manufacturers sell ~3 ft. and ~6 ft. lengths, using the straightest, densest material for the 6 ft. planks, which they often refer to as Premium grade. EcoTimber utilizes the 6 ft. lengths exclusively.
Finish Most prefinished Bamboo products use polyurethane finish systems. Our Prefinished Bamboo flooring uses a high-tech aluminum oxide enhanced acrylated urethane system with a hardened acrylic anti-scratch topcoat. In abrasion tests, this system meets or exceeds test results from industry-leading aluminum oxide enhanced polyurethane finishes, and it outperforms them in scratch-resistance tests.
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