Bamboo flooring

[misterfish]

Hi guys

We're in the process of having an extension built and renovating our 1950s house and could do with some guidance and advice about flooring.

Upstairs, we had planned to use solid oak t&g planking throughout to replace the existing pine floorboards that have been badly abused by previous plumbers and electricians - loose, squeaking, damaged and unsupported in places.

We intend to completely rewire and replumb and then put down the new floors.

Looking around at oak there is a wide variety easily available at 18mm or more thickness and this should be ok to span the joists that are just under 18 inches on centre.

However - throwing a spanner in the works is bamboo flooring which both SWMBO and I quite like (and it's cheaper). The possible problem is that the 'vertical' style we like is only available in 15mm thickness and I can't seem to find out whether this is strong enough to nail directly to the joints - all the info I seem to be able to find talk about fixing it to existing floors and 'underlayments'.

Has anybody got any knowledge or experience of relevance to this - from what I can gather 18mm oak can be nailed directly to joists without any unerlayer and is strong enough. Is bamboo much stronger than oak to the extent that 15mm is wonderfully rigid?

Any help appreciated

MisterFish

 

[9fingers]

Based on no experience with such flooring, intuitively I would have expected bamboo to have little strength along the grain. If it is the bigger brother of garden cane, it will have good longitudinal strength but split with ease.

just my 2p

Bob

 

[AndyBoyd]

We had bamboo laminated flooring in my old office, it was dammed expensive 600€ per 2.4m x 1.2 m sheet :shock: (but I did work for the second most profitable comany in the world so that was not an issue)

So it seems strong ehough, but as for the thickness of the sheets I do not know, and of course it was very beautiful floor.

 

[Jake]

It is intended to have a subfloor underneath it, which could be chipboard. It isn't the equivalent of a solid wood floor, it's the equivalent of an engineered wood laminate like Kahrs etc.