Any Tips For Installing Prefinished Bamboo In My Own House?

canadianwood

Doing some bamboo in my own house next week, any tips from you flooring pros? I've never worked with bamboo before, I have about 700 sqft to install, going to use cleat nails rather than staples, any tips?

Thanks in advance,

Cdat

Not really enough info to go by. My best advice is to make sure you acclimate it first. I'll wait a bit before I trust a newer product. Especially anything coming from China.

Floorwizard

solid bamboo?
Engineered?
Which brand?
Strand Bamboo?

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canadianwood

Prefinished 3 1/4" Bamboo, has been in the house for 3 1/2 weeks, boxes opened.

mickeyco

Keep pandas out of there after you do it.









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floorinstall

Be sure to leave adequate expansion around all vertical surfaces. It is critical.

canadianwood

Does bamboo expand/contract more or less than typical hardwoods? I am just looking for pointers on the wood's characteristics, does it cut easily, does it splinter, etc,etc? What type of conventional hardwood is it most similar to?

canadianwood

BUt I own 3 pandas with another on the way

Floorwizard

I understand it's prefinished....that doesn't help...
3 1/4 is good info...but still no help
Bamboo....we know this...

But my original questions will really help to figure this out...

solid bamboo?
Engineered?
Which brand?
Strand Bamboo?

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canadianwood

I am not very observant, it is 5/8" thick solid bamboo , made in China, brand name NOVO.

Floorwizard

You should use roofing felt to prevent squeaks.
Make sure you have something to add moisture to it after install.

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WarnerConstInc.

No heels, or dragging stuff on it either.

macatawacab

I just installed my first bamboo floor. Solid, 3" strand woven, all 6' lengths. Used the Bostich stapler with 2" staples (could not find the recommended 1.5") on 3/4" OCB,T&G sub, over a vented crawl space. Acclimated for two weeks. Separated all the boards. Used 30# felt underlayment.

Only difference with bamboo is density. First day was awful with the staples. Found that we had to back off the pressure to 65 - 75psi or the board was shattering and staples rolling over. Took several pieces and used them as sacrifices as we played with pressure until we found the aforementioned best results. Most of our other guns run at 110 - 125psi so this was a different experience.

We got used to pulling about one in fifty staples even with the lower pressure but the staples that went in were great and we had no shattering. Used channel locks against the tongue or floor to pull the staples. One of my guys has arms like Popeye.

Caution has to be taken on the beat board. The edges are fragile and if the beat board is not perfectly flat you will get some compression slivers and dents.

Layout with all 6' was easy. Went from left to right, then back right to left. No butts closer than 24". Very little waste.

Floor turned out great. Customer loved it. I was proud of it. Would use Bamboo in a heart beat because it is a good look and really tough.

Good luck

Mr. D

bamboo splinters are torture.

Floordude

Ya, tell me about it!! Just like needles.


Bamboo shrinks and swells at twice the rate of red oak. It also shrinks and swells in 6 dimensions, unlike 4 dimensions for wood.

Because of the grain, it will show every little scratch or dent.

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Floorwizard

Maybe not...

We are assuming this is natural Bamboo and not strand.....

If it's strand it is 200% harder than oak and shows very little....

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canadianwood

Well its done now, I used my Bostitch MIII, 1 3/4" staples @ 110 psi, had very few problems with splitting. The only thing I had to do was to adjust the shoe with 2 layers of thin cardboard to make up for the 5/8" thick floor. I'm sure you can get a different shoe thickness to make up for it but who cares, cardboard is free.

Bamboo splinters are terrible, like tiny needles or glass splinters, just aweful!

The only drawbacks (aside from the splinters) was the ease at which it splinters along the grain and how soft it felt when working with it. It feels much softer than a typical hardwood, but this probably depends on the age at harvest, I'm sure the older growth stuff is pretty hard.

I got some pics of the stairs (no local supplier of bamboo nosings, didn't want to pay to mill 3/4" maple nosings down to 5/8", so I improvised using a maple nosing for laminate).

ARRRGG, can someone tell me how to attach pics? I think it won't let me do it, maybe the files are too big (mine are 3.5 MB, it says limit is 200KB), how do you resize files?

Floorwizard

Yea!


Depends. After 7 years or so it starts to get softer again. No way to be for sure unless you grow the suff in farms like Teragren Bamboo.
Plus there are different grades of Bamboo just like wood.
Moso Bamboo tends to be the most durable.

as long as it looks good!

near the top of the area where you are typing your post there will be a tab to insert image. It's yellow and looks like some mountains....Kind of like a post-it with mtns on it.

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canadianwood

I'll try this again:

The first shot is before I finished off the tops of the stringers
The next two are finished shots of the stairs before touching up the nail holes,etc

Attached Thumbnails

     

Floorwizard

That is very good lookin!

Congrats!

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"in 20 years you will regret more what you did not do than what you did"