In my book, domestic woods are the best choice for wood floors, especially oak. Years ago manufacturers brought us bamboo, engineered and composite products. That was to fill a demand from consumers. Fast, cheap and pretty. Over the years, different products came and went. All products had their share of problems. I had been thinking for awhile now about our flooring trade-about which products have come and gone and which are here to stay. I think it was last month when I was called to inspect two failed bamboo floors over concrete slabs … floors that needed to be replaced. That triggered this post for me. I had said it a million times and will say it another million times: Harvesting our forests responsibly is the best thing for the environment, produces the best products, creates most long-lasting products and leaves the smallest carbon footprint of all other flooring products. I'd like to mention some things some of you may not be aware of, and here are some of the facts you cannot argue:
- Clear-cutting forests to put in bamboo plantations affects not only the trees that are now gone, but the entire habitat for wildlife is gone.
- Think about all the strand products that need to be replaced because of failure. Most of them are on concrete. Now you are piling up the landfill with strand garbage and having to grind down more concrete, use more epoxy sealers and use more adhesives to install another floor.
- These floors require glues, resins and chemicals to produce them. Oak, well, you just have to cut it.
- Consider the short life of these floors: Most of the engineered and composite products have already been replaced. The new owners did not like them. You could not change the color. Could not refinish them. They were discontinued … You name it.
- I have torn up oak floors because they were more than 100 years old and could not be sanded anymore. That's it.
- Non-solid products behave in many different ways. Nobody really knows how strand and composite products respond to changes in relative humidity and temperature. That creates a ton of failed floors. Every time you have a failed floor in strand and engineered products, they have to be replaced.
- Refinishing prefinished floors releases toxins to the air, some of which you and I can't even pronounce.
- You have to do more sanding to remove the micro-bevel on prefinished floors-probably twice the amount of the material removed when refinishing standard square-edge unfinished oak.
- Most of the other products are made overseas. That reminds me of a story-at a local lumber yard around here someone walked in with a prefinished bamboo plank that had a child-size handprint on it-can you say child labor and sustainable together without stuttering?
- Most composites are so hard to nail so installers prefer to glue them, even on a wood subfloor. When that floor comes up (and it will), the subfloor will come up with it. Not to mention the use of adhesives, the cleaners for them and the off-gassing.
- Hand-scraped prefinished floors can only be refinished by re-scraping. Who will pay for that? Plus, some of them are light woods like maple. The color on them comes from dyes in the finish. How many guys do you know who can replicate that?
- Every time there is problem with a floor someone calls, drives, prints, takes photos, emails, flies and the list goes on. If it goes to court, now we have a ton of people handling that case. That means more people driving, printing, emailing, filing, and the list goes on. That is all part of a carbon footprint.
I know there will be plenty of people who have responses to what I've written in this post, and I've asked the HF Green Blogger, Elizabeth Baldwin, to respond soon on her blog with her thoughts on this topic.
