For years, people thought of bamboo — if they thought of it at all — as either food for cuddly pandas or as an attractive and slightly exotic element in their garden. But times change. Increasingly, bamboo is found in a multitude of products, from bowls to floors. And it’s as a flooring material that bamboo has come into its own.
“Bamboo floors are elegant, exotic and easy to care for,” says Ian Jackson, manager of K & M Bamboo Products Inc. in Markham. The company has been importing bamboo flooring for about 11 years, and for good reasons. “Bamboo is environmentally sustainable and completely renewable,” Jackson says.
And he’s right. Bamboo is not a tree but a fast-growing grass, so harvesting it is rather like cutting your lawn: it doesn’t destroy the plant, merely makes it shorter and healthier. Then it continues to grow — about 12 metres in three years. Unlike traditional hardwoods, which are harvested every 40 to 60 years, bamboo is probably the world’s fastest-growing plant, and can be cut every three to five years. The species is so durable that, shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, reports surfaced of a bamboo grove at ground zero that was sprouting new shoots. “It’s monster stuff — it can be almost half a metre in diameter,” says Jackson. “It’s thick, strong — not exactly what the pandas eat. And you can get a large amount out of a small area.”
K & M’s product is grown in China, in small, government-controlled forests. It is then cut into strips roughly ¼ -inch high by 2.5 cm wide and as long as two metres. It is treated against insects with boric acid and lime, then kiln-dried. The strips are then laminated together. One method laminates the strips together horizontally, so you see long, 2.5-cm-wide strips on the floor. Another method laminates the strips vertically, side by side, in ¼-inch strips. The one-metre- or two-metre-long by nine-cm-wide planks are then laid on the floor like hardwood.
The wood can be left its natural blond colour or carbonized, a toasting process that creates a richer colour. Bamboo flooring is also available in a myriad of finishes, colours and varieties, including standard, pre-finished, tongue-and-groove planks, floating floors with click-type installation, and a composite floor made to look more like traditional hardwood. According to the National Hardwood Flooring Association, natural bamboo flooring is 10 percent harder than red-oak flooring.
K&M’s product is the first flooring product to bear Environment Canada’s EcoLogo. For this designation, it had to meet several environmental criteria, which included water-based finishes formulated with very low levels of volatile organic compounds. (Many flooring products emit harmful volatile compounds.) Also, none of the finishes contains heavy metals or ingredients containing suspected carcinogens or mutagens.
The cost of bamboo flooring is roughly the cost of maple flooring: about $7 to $9 a square foot, fully installed.
There are two more bamboo benefits. First, inherent in its properties is that it doesn’t expand or contract much when exposed to moisture, so it can be used in basements. And finally, it looks great!
K & M’s products are sold in a variety of stores under the brand name Silkroad Bamboo. Alexanian’s in Toronto and Healthiest Homes in Ottawa both carry it.
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