Bamboo flooring

[Jeremy Harris]

My experience is limited to having laid a couple of rooms in the old house with uniclic-like laminate flooring, floating on underlay, with expansion strips all around (a right pain in a house where the skirtings are nailed to the walls!) and laying half the ground floor and most of the first floor of the new house with T&G bamboo, bonded down..

 

I can't say I'm that happy with the click-together floating floors.  Both just don't feel great to walk on, and even though they are laid on concrete, with the proper (and most expensive underlay) I can't say they are particularly stable.  They don't make any noises when you walk on them, but there is that slight feeling of movement.  One very major issue was the first laminate floor I laid in the kitchen of the old house.  About 6 months after I laid it the central heating sprang a small leak and water got under the laminate and into the underlay.  I had to pull the whole lot up and replace it, as the stench was just unbelievable.

 

On the other hand, the T&G bamboo was quicker to lay and is inherently well-sealed, as it's bonded down with Sikabond 95. The bonded bamboo floors feel a heck of a lot better to walk on, IMHO, as they are really solid-feeling. The T&G is also a lot easier to lay around awkward areas, as you don't have the problem that the uniclic stuff has of having to insert new planks at exactly the right angle, all along their length, before pushing them down so they lock into place.  It's surprisingly difficult to do this when you're working around cut-out areas, like doorways, where you cant get the boards in at the right angle.  T&G allows you to slide boards lengthways when they are down, making it a lot easier to get a neat finish in awkward areas, whereas you can't easily slide two uniclic boards relative to each other once they are down flat and locked..

 

I'm far from being an expert, or even someone with a lot of experience, but I would definitely recommend bonded down T&G, especially if you want something that's easy to fit and gives a very solid-feeling floor.  We've laid some rugs over ours, where the beds go and in the centre of the living room, but because the flooring is usually at, or slightly above, room temperature it's not unpleasant to walk on in bare feet I've been told (my better half tends to always walk around barefoot - I stick with very thick sheepskin slippers from Skye..........).

[Crofter]

Ah yes Skyeskyns slippers!

What @JSHarris says about T&G vs click fitting seems to make sense. Brings back memories of when I did a hallway with click laminate in my last house, the boards had been stored a bit too long and some had begun to warp (it was a damp house), and getting them to lock down uniformly was an absolute pita- the boards are simply too long. With a few extra hands it would have been much easier.

 

I've still to make the final decision on what to use to bond down the bamboo. Most people will be laying this on a flat slab or chipboard floor, but I'm thinking of having electric UFH mats on top of my chipboard, so I'll need a deep enough bed of adhesive to accommodate that. Also it's a suspended floor with a 16ft span so despite deep engineered joists there is inevitably some deflection. Hence any bonding agent has to have a good degree of flexibility.

[Jeremy Harris]

18 minutes ago, Crofter said:

Ah yes Skyeskyns slippers!

 

 

I have the Skyeskyns on right now, whilst typing this.....................

 

The cheaper polymer that Peter W found looks good, and I can't see any problem with using it with UFH heatng mats.  I'd probably lay a thin layer of adhesive, embed the mat into it, then lay more adhesive and lay the boards.  I tended to put enough adhesive down or two or three boards at a time, and that would probably fit well with the width of the sections of heating mat.

[DH202020]

WARNING

Like others have said do not use in wet areas...we finished laying ours in lounge area a week before we moved in, then disaster...full blown water leak in kitchen, it ran for 20min, water seeped under the stuck down bamboo floor (to concrete).

It immediately started to lift-cup and generally misshapen!

 

I lifted several lengths to dry out floor, but in doing so others that were left began to lift and misshapen as well, so in the end I put large heavy weights on them and gradually dried out floor via the underfloor heating!

it was a real mess, managed to replace the boards that came up with new ones, glued them down eventually.

you can still feel the cups on the boards over a fair area of the floor, in a way the floor looks a lot older now because the shape of the slightly cupped floorboards.

P.s still love the bamboo, I used the rustic finish, definitely hard wearing...just don't submerge in H2o

 

[Crofter]

Dragging this one back up again...

Bamboo seems to have crept up in price a little, and the cheapest I can currently find is £22.79/m2 inc VAT.

I can get engineered oak from £21.99

 

Now when I Google 'engineered oak vs bamboo' I can find whatever answer I want to find as to which is more durable. A lot of sites list bamboo as being better value but work on the assumption that it is actually lower cost.

Just trying to get my head around this... I think there must be some 'alternative facts' going on somewhere...

 

Maybe when you spend this little on oak you get a tiny sliver of actual wood? It's quite hard to find out how thick the wear layer is which I guess isn't a good sign.

[PeterW]

Most Oak EW will have the spec of the wearing layer - 4-5mm in a lot of cases. Oak is not a very hard wood, it does dink easily and gravel in boots is a classic example of how that happens. 

 

I paid about £30 a metre for oak from memory for my front hallway including the glue and it looks ok still after 8 years but it's not a huge space. 

[Guest Alphonsox]

We've recently been going through the same discussion due to the price increases. The engineered Oak we have seen comes with different thicknesses of top veneer layer - from 2mm to 6mm. The 2mm thick stuff is cheap but looks too lightweight to be seriously considered. The 4mm and 6mm look more robust and can apparently be refinished if required but is more expensive.

There seems to be a lot of disagreement about the robustness of bamboo flooring (see http://bambooflooringreviews.org/). I think this may be due to the wide variety of wood orientation and construction available. I have a number of samples available which I need to do some more tests on before committing one way or another,

[Crofter]

Just noticed that TP do 'Westco' bamboo at a good price- slightly less than Simply Bamboo, and of course I can pick it up and not pay through the nose for delivery. Sample is in the post...

[PeterW]

Westco is a TP Group own brand that's also available in Wickes. It appears on their offers frequently 

[oranjeboom]

2 hours ago, PeterW said:

Westco is a TP Group own brand that's also available in Wickes. It appears on their offers frequently 

If only Toolstation did flooring, then that would be another 10% off...

[Stones]

7 hours ago, Crofter said:

Dragging this one back up again...

Bamboo seems to have crept up in price a little, and the cheapest I can currently find is £22.79/m2 inc VAT.

I can get engineered oak from £21.99

 

Now when I Google 'engineered oak vs bamboo' I can find whatever answer I want to find as to which is more durable. A lot of sites list bamboo as being better value but work on the assumption that it is actually lower cost.

Just trying to get my head around this... I think there must be some 'alternative facts' going on somewhere...

 

Maybe when you spend this little on oak you get a tiny sliver of actual wood? It's quite hard to find out how thick the wear layer is which I guess isn't a good sign.

 

 

We went through the process of comparing bamboo and oak samples.  Certainly from the tests I put the various samples through, bamboo was more robust to things being dropped on it, but scratched the same as oak.

 

We opted for oak as we preferred the appearance of oak over bamboo.  We have been in a couple of houses that had bamboo and it was fine in those surroundings, but not the look we were after.  

 

You can get cheap oak, but it only has 2mm wear layer so other than localised repair (gentle sanding) not ideal for refurbishment. We opted for 3mm wear layer (14mm boards).  We had a little damage (scratching) caused on move in day, not by the removers, but by the kids dragging a small footstool around before the furniture pads went on. No doubt there will be various dinks as time passes but this adds to its character (or so I'm told...).  

 

Prices do seem to have risen over the last few months (by £6 / m2 in the case of the supplier I used!)

[Crofter]

I decided to do a 24hr immersion test of three different types of bamboo: strand woven, vertical, and horizontal.

I was a little surprised that the the horizontal fared the best, by a long way. No cupping, bowing, and critically no raising of grain at the surface. Next was the vertical, where again the board remained in good shape but there was a slight raising of grain at the surface, enough to feel when you drag a thumbnail across it. Some way behind these was the strand woven. This sample was a lot thinner, so perhaps it's not an entirely fair test. The board bowed slightly, but much worse is that the surface finish has failed, buckling and bursting. I expect that this is permanent damage and would need to be sanded out.

 

The strand woven sample was 10mm, from 'simply bamboo', and is the cheapest of the three. However strand woven is supposed to be the most durable. It was the most resistant to scratches when I scraped it with my thumbnail (pre immersion).

The other two samples were from the Bamboo Flooring Company, and whilst thry fared better at the immersion test, it was possible to scratch these samples with a thumb nail, in particular the vertical one.

 

I also got a sample of cheap engineered oak, with a 2.5mm wear layer- this is cheaper than any of the bamboo options, and looks quite acceptable. It failed the nail scratch test very easily indeed, so easily that I didn't bother doing the immersion test as I had already discounted it.

 

So, at the moment the horizontal bamboo seems to be winning. Which is a shame, because I think I prefer the look of the stand woven!

 

Has anybody else ( @JSHarris ?) done similar tests?

 

Picture shows, from L to R, strand woven 10mm, horizontal 15mm, vertical 15mm

[Jeremy Harris]

I haven't done a test like this, but I have some offcuts of strand woven bamboo in some rubble bags, that are waiting to go to the tip, so I'll take a bit out and dunk it in a bucket.  Ours is similar looking to the middle sample above, I think, "14mm thick, Solid Natural Strand Woven 142mm Bamboo Flooring", supplied by the Bamboo Flooring Company.

[Ferdinand]

21 hours ago, JSHarris said:

I haven't done a test like this, but I have some offcuts of strand woven bamboo in some rubble bags, that are waiting to go to the tip, so I'll take a bit out and dunk it in a bucket.  Ours is similar looking to the middle sample above, I think, "14mm thick, Solid Natural Strand Woven 142mm Bamboo Flooring", supplied by the Bamboo Flooring Company.

 

@Crofter

I have been playing with another way for self-employed people to save another 10% at Wickes. Haven't written it up for the savings thread yet, so I will do it here first.

 

We know about Employee Benefit Programmes which give 10% off, but I have discovered that my Health Cash Plan, Westfield, have their own Westfield Rewards programme which also gives 10% off. A Health Cash Plan is one where you pay a regular (say "£25 a month) subscription, and receive cash grants for glasses, or the dentist, or the chiropodist, or the chiropracter, or a small amount (say £20) for each day as an in patient - all depending on your level of membership. These are mainly relics from before the NHS when they were used as a form of social insurance.

 

However, usually just a couple of grants - say teeth and eyes - will add up to 100% of the subscription if you use them every year.

 

Westfield Rewards have a website here, and it also gives 10% off at B&Q and loads of other retailers. Wickes discounts are only in store via a reloadable (online) gift card. I am sure that there are other "non-employee" benefits out there; I have just not found any,

Wickes at present also have a JUNE2017 discount code which saves 10% online.

 

Here is the Bamboo Flooring closest to Jeremy's:14mm stranded bamboo woven, but 96mm wide boards.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/Westco-Stranded-Bamboo-Solid-Wood-Flooring/p/215564

 

Cost is 29.99 per sqm.

 

The best I can do with that is £23.99 per sqm via 

- 10% Trade Discount plus 10% via the Westfield Rewards programme. That is 19% when stacked plus I get 1% more by topping up the gift card using a debit card that gives me a reward. So 20% off.

 

or slightly cheaper at around £23.70 per sqm via

- 10% off using JUNE2017 voucher code stacked with a 10% Trade Discount when purchasing online via the App (=19% assuming it stacks). Then another 1-2% by using a cashback or reward Amex Card to order. So 21% off.

 

The staff discount for TP Employees at Wickes is 20%, so I do not think we will be able to do much better unless sales or 3 for 2s etc kick in.

 

The price I am offered at TP (cash account) for the 15mm thick version is coming in at about £22.70 per sqm inc VAT with whatever my account is, minus perhaps 1% more for my reward Credit / Amex card = £22.40 or so per sqm.

 

If that is your price, it is OK imo if you want the bamboo.

 

Ferdinand

Edited June 20, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

As promised, I put an offcut of strand woven bamboo in a bucket of water on Monday and have just taken it out to see how it's fared.  The first thing I noticed is that the it sinks, so the density has to be a fair bit higher than uncompressed and treated bamboo.

 

After nearly 5 days of immersion, water has soaked in at the cut edges, and discoloured it a bit, but there seems to be very little distortion.  It's very slightly cupped, perhaps around 1mm in the centre.  The lacquer doesn't seem to have been affected at all.

 

I'm going to let it dry out for a few days, then I'll take another photo for comparison, to see if it regains its original colour.

 

[Crofter]

Thanks for that Jeremy, interesting. My sample of strand-woven was the cheapest one from 'simply bamboo', and is only 10mm thick. I think I'll have to continue the hunt as I'd be reluctant to use it given how poorly it fared when it got wet.

I might have to employ some of Ferdinand's tricks to get discounts from the likes of Wickes/TP. I can spend another £2/m2 there because of the money I'm saving on delivery!

[Jeremy Harris]

Based on the (very extreme) test of several days of total immersion, I'd say that there's a good chance that the 14mm stuff would be OK if it just got soaked for a short period of time.  The Sikabond that I used to stick ours down should seal the underside pretty well, and stop water getting underneath it, so the main issue would be water getting in via the joints.

 

Before we fitted the bamboo, we were warned of a potential problem in wet areas from a friend.  He'd laid it in their bathroom and found that the combination of splashes and bare feet polished the surface and made it quite slippery.  Not enough to be a problem for adults, but he was concerned that his young children might slip on it.

 

With luck that bit of bamboo will have dried out by early next week, so I'll try and take another photo to see how well it recovers.

[Nickfromwales]

We've discussed the oak being a product that can be refinished, ( sanded and recoated as required ), but no mention yet of this being possible with the bamboo. One assumes that if going with a bonded solid material, such as bamboo, then if the worst happened you could hire a sander, sand it all back flat, and recoat it? You couldn't say the same of a thin veneered product as by the time you sanded enough to remove the 'cup' you'll be best way through the veneer?

[PeterW]

5 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

We've discussed the oak being a product that can be refinished, ( sanded and recoated as required ), but no mention yet of this being possible with the bamboo. One assumes that if going with a bonded solid material, such as bamboo, then if the worst happened you could hire a sander, sand it all back flat, and recoat it? You couldn't say the same of a thin veneered product as by the time you sanded enough to remove the 'cup' you'll be best way through the veneer?

 

Yep had to do it with some stranded bamboo flooring - needs a decent sanding belt or pad though as the varnish on mine seems to be very hard and sanders seemed to skate on it. 

[Nickfromwales]

Worth knowing that it doesn't beak down when sanded  Just wondered, with the mention of it being stranded. 

[Jeremy Harris]

I shaped some to make thresholds between the bedrooms and bathrooms, as the bathroom floors are about 9mm higher.  It's very hard, and not easy to plane, even with an electric plane and TC blades, but a belt sander worked OK.  I finished them with some varnish and they look just the same as the adjacent ready-finished flooring. 

 

The stuff works a bit like a hardwood with a twisted grain.  It reminded me of working with some Idigbo that I used on my old boat; that was a pig to work because of the grain.

[Nickfromwales]

Ok, so sanding a damaged floor will likely be a professional machine job, but still do-able without needing to remove and replace vs veneered engineered boards. 

[Crofter]

I've done another batch of immersion tests and found something quite interesting.

Out of the simply bamboo 10mm strand woven, the results are:

Natural finish glossy- fail

Coffee finish glossy- fail

Coffee finish matte- pass

 

I did have a natural finish matte sample but it's gone walkies.

By 'pass' I mean that the surface remains intact, even if there is some swelling or distortion. 'Fail' means that the surface has begun to break up.

I wasn't expecting the finish to affect the reaction to immersion, but the test suggests that it does. @JSHarris IIRC your sample was also matte, yes?

[Jeremy Harris]

@Crofter, I'm not sure it was described as matt, but the finish is definitely not gloss, more like a sort of satin finish.  When we bought the stuff I think it was only available from the Bamboo Flooring Company as 14mm thick planks, rather than 10mm, and that may make a difference.

 

The sample I left in a bucket last week has pretty much dried out now, and I'll take a photo later to show how it looks.

[Crofter]

I would really need a much larger collection of samples to be more scientific about this, but SWMBO is already complaining that I've stolen all her best pots and pans, filled them with water and bits of bamboo, and left them lying all over the house.

Thickness may be one factor, but I can't do a like for like comparison there. However the 10mm strand woven matte has faired better than some of the thicker samples, albeit those were of different construction and finish.

I am very tempted to stick with strand woven, since it is supposed to be the hardest wearing, and the ability to sand it back would be a bonus. At the moment the cheapest SW option from the Bamboo Flooring Co is a Uniclic system which is a big jump up in price.