A couple of years ago I was told that some of the bamboo floors started to splinter. Has anyone had this experience?

The stranded will not wear any better than the horizontal/vertical because you are not wearing the grass, you are wearing the finish on top. What they are saying is that it will be more stable under duress such as excessive moisture. The one sample I have seen looked to be more glue than grass, but it was an admittedly poor quality.
Installing bamboo is veryu much the same as any hardwood. As for splintering, that is possible with a low-grade horizontal product. You get what you pay for. Don't buy the cheap stuff.

Marco1--thanks. I'm going to look into the bamboo mfgs. with the best reputations for high quality product. Would the fact that I'd be installing bamboo over an 80 year wood floor mean that I should consider one type of bamboo over another (horizontal/vertical/strand), or do I understand correctly that you are advising that the key factor is the manufacturer and the finish used? Thanks. I appreicate your and everyones' input

Costco sells bamboo flooring on their web site!

http://www.costco.com/Common/Category.aspx?whse=BC&topnav=&cat=21132&hierPath=93*&Browse=

Katy

Here is a link that might be useful: Costco - Bamboo flooring

Thanks--I'll check it out

Anybody out there used the Costco bamboo? What was your experience?

I have bamboo flooring in my bathroom and kitchen. Down for about a year now. Have had no problems with it. You come directly into the house on it, so I would say it handles high traffic. Only needs warm water to clean, a swifter, mop or what ever. I have used diluted bleach water in the kitchen, for when the cats throw up. My house is "ancient" 200-250 years old. The kitchen consists of "old kitchen" and "old porch" made into one before I came. The bamboo was laid down right over the linoleun - with adjustments made where the "original floors" came together. I can tell a little with bare feet, where they join, but you could never tell by the eye.

I'm so glad to hear about your experiences with bamboo in circumstances similiar to yours, jleek. Did you use any special type of finish? Thanks.

Is bamboo a good product for the bathroom? I will be putting new flooring in the kitchen and adjoining bath, and have had enough tolet overflows to be concerned. I have been thinking about tile in the bathroom and trying to figure out a pleasing way to join it in with hardwood running in the kitchen. Any feedback?

We just bought a bunch of that costco bamboo flooring and installed it in the kitchen, bedroom, and family room. It went in very nicely with a cleet floor nailer (porter cable) and finishing nailer for those tough spots in corner and last row. For the price ($1.87 per sq ft), I'm not sure there was anything out there much better. I have white oak floors in my house right now and I think I would prefer the consistency of the bamboo over it (it is old and has lots of wood filler in it). We put the bamboo on top of 1/2 plywood with plenty of cleets and it doesn't seem to creek:

Here is a link that might be useful: Floor pics

Hi dickey45,

I'm also in the look for bamboo flooring. The price you got at Costco is very good, I searched their web page but saw that the price is above $3/sq ft. Did you buy your floor in the store or in their web page?
BTW your floor looks great.

Thanks...Val

Val, I haven't checked the store yet - maybe tomorrow - but I did not that on the website, they specifically say that what they sell online is not the same product as what they sell in the stores.

Indeed dmlove, I 'll also try their store Today if I have the chance. Less than $2 per sq. ft. is a very atractive price. So far the cheapest I've found is Fair Pacific Bamboo, who sell their floor at ~$3 sq. ft. including shipping, however there is no feedback on them in this forum and when I purchased their samples I noticed the milling work was not very good, what makes me wonder how their floor will be.

Thanks for replying...Val

I have strand woven bamboo in my house. It's been in for over 6 months now, and I have no complaints. Ours is Yanchi strand woven carbonized, 5/8", glued down over concrete. I do have one scratch that I was able to pretty much buff out. We're still remodeling other areas of the house, and the scratch was caused by plaster getting stuck in a shoe - which would scratch anything!

Before buying, I did several unscientific scratch tests on bamboo and hardwood samples. I found that the horizontal and vertical bamboo both showed scratches much more easily than the strand woven. For the horizontal and vertical, the natural fared much better than the carbonized. No difference between the natural and carbonized on the strand woven, though - both were very hard to scratch - on par with Brazillian Cherry.

Val, I got the Fair Pacific samples too and didn't notice the milling problems - mine looked really good. I'm surprised at the price you mentioned, though. On their website, their prices range from I think $3.60-$4.10 depending on the length and width of the boards. I don't remember seeing anything under $3.00. I'm going to check the milling more carefully tonight.

I ordered my samples months ago, the price back then was $3.10 for the 3 ft. long boards (the cheapest product). I found that when the samples were assembled there was some lippage (I believe that's what is called) meaning that the surface was not even (same height) between boards. I checked barely the Yanchi produts but I think I need to order a container to have a good price on their products and don't need that much. There is some talk about what type of bamboo is more scratch resistant, but if all use the same finish then I believe all of them should scratch the same, but I don't know for sure. Strand woven should be more resistant to water damage but can also outgas depening on the glue used for its manufacture.

We bought engineered, natural, vertical grain bamboo through fastfloors.com, manufacturer Stepco Flooring. I'll be the first to say, their flooring stinks. Their "click" together, no glue floating system isn't that great. And even though the flooring is very new, even as it was going down the edges seemed rough and I certainly wouldn't slide my feet across the floor unprotected.

Also, we haven't even done much in the room yet, no even living in it yet, and we notice dings and indentations here or there already from some light construction work (trim etc..). Thank goodness the floor is light colored so you really have to look to see the marks, but we know they are there!

I'll link to a picture of my bedroom with the flooring installed.

I had heard previously on this forum about bamboo in vertical and horizontal being much softer than the industry has led on and that its not that "hard". From my own experience, I agree. I'm glad I didn't buy it for my dining room, it was an option I considered.

Someone on the kitchen forum used the WilsonArt Estate series bamboo laminate in her kitchen and it turned out lovely. Thats what I would have probably done had I known then what I know now.

Here is a link that might be useful: my bamboo floor

Why did you install it with all the ends lined up like that with "H" joints??? Instead of random?

It does look like doggy doo.

We installed as per manufacturer's specifications. They didn't send different length boards, all boards were same length and we were told to start with either a whole piece or half piece that we shouldn't have less than "x" many inches on the beginnning/end of a run. The instruction in effect told you how to install the floor so you would end up with "H" joints.

The ends of the planks had grooves that needed to be used to join the pieces together on end, so we couldn't eactly cut the boards up to produce a random look, then we wouldn't have had the joints needed to connect each run.

Well, I had the chance to visit Costco today, I saw the bamboo flooring and the price of less than $2 per sq. ft. seems like a deal to me. The boards are 3 ft long. 19/32" thick and more than 3" wide. Not bad. They only have one color that is caralmelized (carbonized?) quite a bit less dark than the Pacific Bamboo samples. People interested should take a look at this floor at Costco.

taw9370:
We have also purchased Stepco brand bamboo flooring from FastFloors.

I'll start by noting that they screwed up our order a bit; the salesperson incorrectly described the trim accessories available, and the 'end-cap' or 'threshold' trim was overlap style - like you would use for a floating install - rather than the integral tongue-n-groove style we wanted. The reducer on the other hand _was_ integral with the flooring, so either Stepco doesn't describe it very well, or the salesperson just didn't check hard enough.

However, we have been very happy with FastFloors' customer service post-screwup. They haven't seemed to dodge our calls and respond to both phone and email queries quickly. They agreed to send out additional reducer (which our installer agrees could be modified to our needs) to replace the end-cap trim (which they told us to just keep because it wasn't worth it to them to pay to ship it back), and it fedexed out the next day.

Of course, FedEx somehow managed to lose it and didn't tell anyone till they missed their scheduled delivery date :-(. Our tracking number showed it as 'on time for delivery' on the specified day until it missed then it just showed nothing. Bad FedEx >:-(.

However, a quick call to FastFloors, and they're sending us another replacement, no problems at all. Due to the multiple snafus we're pushing the time envelope for getting everything together (contractor supposed to start this week), but we're pretty happy with the FastFlors service so far.

As to the Stepco product itself, we're getting the carbonized/carmelized strand woven 'Dimensions' engineered floor for a glue-down install on concrete. This product is a 3-layer engineered floor where the bottom two layers are perpendicularly laid (middle layer 90 degrees from top or bottom layers) horizontal bamboo, and the top wear layer (nice & thick too) is strand woven.

We hated every horizontal and vertical bamboo sample we got from any manufacturer because they all lacked the advertized "twice as hard as oak or maple!!!!!!1!one" hardness. Very soft in our stress testing - dropping keys, dropping knives, dropping pieces of brio track, turning upside down and standing on them and using as skates on our tile floors (I weigh too much, not gonna tell exactly), gouging with a nail punch.... etc :-). I wouldn't recommend horizontal or vertical grained bamboo to anyone.
I highly recommend the strand woven bamboo however. That stuff is ****ing DENSE and hard as hell. Pretty good water resistance too since it's pretty much all glue - we soaked one sample half in and half out of a bucket of water for about 24 hours and couldn't tell which half was which. WAY harder than the other samples we got (including actual oak and maple samples, which were about on par with the better quality horizontal/vertical bamboo for dentability), and reasonably priced.

So long story short, we found that Stepco was introducing this engineered bamboo with a strand woven top, and it sounded ideal since it combined the durability of a strand woven top with the added stability of engineered construction. Plus it was on sale (online things are always on sale one way or the other), and we got free shipping of our 1300 sq ft (saved another ~$600 there).

We haven't installed yet (like I mentioned, starting this week though), but I'll be keeping my eye out for the rough edges taw9370 mentioned. We unpacked the first couple layers of one box and they looked good on the top edges (the strand woven layer), though I probably could have gotten a splinter off of one of the bottom edges (the horizontal bamboo layer) if I tried. I'm not worried too much at this point as I wouldn't expect the bottom to be as finely finished as the top bevel anyway, though it always gives me a little heart atack when someone says a product is bad after I already bought it :-).

This is actually my first post, though i've been reading for a long time - I just finished a full DIY kitchen remodel including wall/ceiling/cabinet/electrical/counter/appliance removal with lots of reinforcement from the posts on this form. I plan to make a web page with pics of the process and end result when I'm done (ha ha ha ha... seriously. HA HA HA HA - we all know I'll never be completely done) and will try to remember to share.
What I learned from the experience:
1) Ikea cabinets rawk!
2) Whoever thought 7' kitchen ceilings were a good idea (early 80's) should be shot.
3) Removing a (non-load-bearing) wall is easy and fun
4) Whoever invented that simple drywall jack: I love you and want to have your babies.

Pfennig

PS: If anyone in the Austin area is looking for a good installer, I highly reccomend floorguy. We had three contractors come out to quote our install job (I didn't want to screw that one up, and I'd get glue everywhere for sure), and we preferred floorguy over the other two by a large margin. We didn't use him because the price difference between him and the middle-price contractor was a bit over the premium we decided we'd be willing to pay for him, but we'd still highly recommend getting him to come out if you're in the area. We'll let any interested parties know if we'd also recommend the installer we _did_ go with after our install is done :-).

Has anyone used ifloors for bamboo? We are thinking of getting engineered bamboo from them and floating it over our concrete floors with radiant heat. They are saying that we have to float because of the radiant heat, but this is different from what I have heard from other people. The company is Springwood-has anyone used them? One additional note, I would be cautious with the Costco bamboo- only because it may be of cheaper quality, and I have heard some horror stories with cheaper bamboo, especially bamboo bought from lumber liquidators.
Mara

pfennig, glad you had such a good experience. Ours was not so good. However, alot of was in the delivery company. Fast floors used ABF freight to make the delivery and that went as wrong as it could go and there were damages, and fastfloors was saying one thing and ABF was saying another. It was a mess. And the document fastflors sent us to follow regarding how to handle the delivery was a like reading a book, my goodness. the rules and regulations we had to follow just to receive the wood was ridiculous.

Regarding Stepco, hopefully your wood is better than ours. We did a floating floor since we are on radiant heat and that was the best choice. But the quality of the stepco top layer on the engineered wood is horrible. I'm even afraid now walking on it that it will begin splintering before my eyes.

This next time around, I needed to order trim pieces like baseboard and reducer and corner round and risers and treads for the steps, I'm going through bambooadvantage.com, they seem better to work with and their products seem great. They offer alot of bamboo choices for flooring, accessorices and even bamboo furniture and cabinetry. The delivery is due any day now. I'll let everyone know how that goes, but I'm 100% more confident with bamboo Advantage than I was with fastfloors.com

Here is a link that might be useful: Bamboo Advantage

I'm looking at the strand woven bamboo, but there are very few independent reviews of the product out there.

Can anyone share their experience with this product? Has anyone installed this in a kitchen and found problems?

How does it wear? What does it look like in a year or two?

Thanks

Pfennig Wrote:

PS: If anyone in the Austin area is looking for a good installer, I highly reccomend floorguy. We had three contractors come out to quote our install job (I didn't want to screw that one up, and I'd get glue everywhere for sure), and we preferred floorguy over the other two by a large margin. We didn't use him because the price difference between him and the middle-price contractor was a bit over the premium we decided we'd be willing to pay for him, but we'd still highly recommend getting him to come out if you're in the area. We'll let any interested parties know if we'd also recommend the installer we _did_ go with after our install is done :-)

I just saw this...

I'm wondering how it went with the cheaper guy??

I hope Pfennig, is not embarassed to post a follow up!
But I have my suspicions.

Got my throat cut by the cheap guy, happens all the time. That's business. I also provide failure inspections, repairs and corrections. Hehehehe.

I am just wondering what kind of experience anyone has had with Bamboo Advantage's products or Bamboo Hardwoods products.

I am probably going to go with bamboo and I just want to make sure that whoever I order the product from has good service and a good product.