Durable & Sturdy Bamboo Flooring:

Bamboo as a building material has been used for centuries in China, Southeast Asia and Central and South America and is becoming an increasingly used material in contemporary architecture throughout the world. The ancient Chinese created "fire arrows," which were made of bamboo filled with gunpowder, to get more distance to their arrows. These arrows eventually evolved to become the rockets and firecrackers we are familiar with today.

More recently, Thomas Edison used carbonized bamboo for the first successful light filaments. It has been used to make paper, cloth, and even Rayon. Bamboo's tensile strength has been essential in the development of bridges. The Chinese invented suspension bridges using bamboo to cross rivers. Using only the exterior part of the bamboo, which is four times as strong as the interior, they created tension cables up to 120 meters long. Fire resistance is very good because of the high content of silicate acid. It is rated class 1 for flammability. Filled up with water, it can stand a temperature of 400° C while the water cooks inside. Bamboo material offers a surprisingly large number of applications and uses.

Natural bamboo flooring is very durable. It is 13% harder than red oak and 50% more stable than maple and oak meaning that it is less likely to buckle when humidity reaches high levels. It also means bamboo will not take on as much moisture as wood, which will keep the floor from expanding and contracting as much. All of our bamboo planks are treated with a non-toxic aluminum oxide finish with UV inhibitors which gives a resistance to water, mildew and insects.

Janka Ball Hardness: ASTM D1037. Our bamboo exhibits an average hardness of 1820 (Janka ball test). White Oak averages 1360 and Rock Maple averages 1450. The following are the results of individual hardness (lbs) tests performed on each grain and color.

Compare our bamboo with some of the most common wood used for flooring.

BAMBOO

OTHER HARDWOOD FLOORING

Janka Hardness is a test which measures the pounds of force it takes to drive a .44" diameter steel ball 1/2 its depth into wood. These numbers are taken from various publications but principally are from the U.S. Forest Products lab. The higher the number the harder the species.