Author Archives: DIY Flooring

Reasons to Choose Hardwood Flooring

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When choosing a floor for their home, many people immediately consider how it will look, feel, or sound, but something that they may not consider right away is how it will effect their health. Unfortunately, many common flooring options do not rate very well in this area. Here are some reasons to choose hardwood flooring.

These unhealthy flooring choices emit substances called VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds).  These are chemicals that turn into gas at room temperature, and many of them have negative impacts on people’s health.  Carpet, vinyl, laminate, and bamboo floors are all VOC-emitting culprits, and having them in your home can lead to problems such as headaches, nausea, asthma, and even cancer.  Even plywood, found in many subfloors, can emit VOC’s.

Where do these VOC’s come from?  Some options, like vinyl flooring, are made up of them.  In wood flooring products like bamboo, VOC’s usually come from the adhesives or other additives.  In such cases, it is possible to find VOC free products, so long as the manufacturer has not used VOC-emitting glues or finishes.  With regard to plywood subfloors, there are alternative materials you can use, or you can investigate sealants to keep the gases from escaping into your living area.

So how can you be sure that you are not bringing VOC’s into your home?  Eco-Friendly Staybull Flooring uses safe glues to create its recycled wood flooring, and protects it with the VOC free Eco-Shield finish.  We promise that our flooring is completely free of any VOC-emitting additives, making it the perfect healthy choice for your home and family.

Discover the Benefits of Edge-Glued Wide Plank Flooring

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recycled-wide-plank-flooring

For hundreds of years, craftsmen and woodworkers have known that wide boards tend to warp and cup over time. The most stable wood products have always been made of numerous narrow boards to eliminate this problem. Discover the benefits of edge-glued wide plank flooring by Staybull Flooring® and why it is the best fit for you.

To demonstrate the principle, try bending a piece of wire.  It’s pretty easy to do.  Now cut that wire in half and try to bend it.  Just keep repeating that process, and eventually you’ll find that you can’t bend the wire anymore, at least not with your bare hands.

Staybull™ recycled wood flooring applies this principle to its line of green flooring.  By edge-gluing reclaimed scraps into a single wide plank, Staybull™ relieves the tension normally found in wide solid lumber and creates one of the most warp-resistant flooring options on the market.  What this ultimately means for you is that you will have a beautiful floor that will look great for decades.

What is the Taber Abrasion Test?

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The primary purpose of finishing a hardwood floor is to protect it from damage through use. To measure the effectiveness of a finish, it is subjected to the Taber Abrasion Test.  The question is, what is the Taber Abrasion Test? This test is simple.  Flooring squares are secured to a turntable and weighted with sandpaper.  The turntable then spins, causing the sandpaper to wear against the floor.  Each full revolution of the table is referred to as a Taber Cycle, and the number of Taber Cycles it takes for the sandpaper to wear through the finish is the Taber Rating for that finish.

At first you might think that the higher the rating, the better the finish, and many flooring companies boast extremely high Taber Ratings reaching up to 1600, near the top of the scale.  However, outstanding durability is not the only factor when it comes to rating a finish.

High Taber Ratings are achieved through excessive amounts of aluminum oxide abrasion particles.  These particles make the finish inconsistent from board to board, as well as make the end flooring appear cloudy.  This opacity hides the natural beauty of the wood, which almost defeats the purpose of installing a hardwood floor in the first place.

The ideal Taber Rating for a finish, then, is right in the middle of the scale, around 800.  This score provides a sturdy finish without compromising the look of the floor.  It is also the score we aim for with our Eco-Shield™ Hardwood Floor Finish.  If you install the Staybull® brand of eco-friendly hardwood flooring, you will get a beautiful, long lasting floor.

Using Gypcrete, Vinyl, and Radiant Heat as Subflooring

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In our last post, we discussed the different types of subfloors over which you could install the Staybull® brand of eco-friendly wood flooring.  This time, we will take a look at using Gypcrete, Vinyl, and Radiant Heat as subflooring as well. However, these subfloor options are not recommended for our brand of recycled hardwood flooring.  If you choose to install Staybull® over one of these subfloors, you do so at your own risk.  We cannot honor the warranty for the reasons outlined below.

Gypcrete

Gypcrete is like lightweight concrete, and is relatively weaker than a traditional concrete subfloor. Many people who glued down a wood floor on top of gypsum concrete reported that changing moisture levels caused it to expand and contract.  Some people even reported that the subfloor itself was brittle enough to be torn apart under the pressure.  Because of this, if you’re 100% certain you want to use this product, we recommend other flooring options that are suitable for floating installations.  Because Staybull Flooring® is unsuitable for floating installations, we do not recommend using a gypcrete subfloor.

Vinyl

We do not recommend vinyl subfloors underneath Staybull Flooring®, either.  Vinyl can trap moisture beneath the floor, and further aggravate that problem by preventing the wood from breathing on the bottom side.

Radiant Heat

Heat and moisture can cause countless problems with hardwood flooring.  That is one reason why we do not recommend radiant heat subfloors for Staybull Flooring®.  The rapid heating that occurs over radiant heat subfloors can cause rapid moisture changes, which leads to warping, buckling, and cracking.  Only floating installations are suitable over radiant heat subfloors, and Staybull Flooring® is unsuitable for such installations.  We’ve discussed this with engineers and people who know wood inside and out and they tell us time and again that it’s just not a good idea to install ANY hardwood floor over a radiant heat source. Too many things can go wrong and you can end up throwing a lot of money at the resulting problems.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask using the comment form below.

What is the Janka Hardness Test?

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When people say that Brazilian Cherry flooring has a Janka rating of 2200, they are referring to the is a measure of the hardness of the wood. This test measures the force required to push a steel ball about halfway into a piece of wood.

How important is the Janka rating of a specific flooring species?

The Janka Hardness Test is not the only benchmark to consider when choosing hardwood flooring for a couple of reasons. Factors such as the harvesting, moisture content, age and number of growth rings are a few of the factors that may vary the exact results. This is why the value rating that is awarded is based on an average.

Besides Janka, what factors should be considered when choosing wood flooring?

Plank construction and finish are factors when determining the durability and ease of maintenance of any wood floor.

Since the exotic and domestic eco-flooring options that Staybull Flooring™ provides are constructed with the highest quality hand selected strips, Janka hardness should not be the only determining factor when choosing which Staybull Flooring™ species is right for your particular application. In addition all Staybull Flooring™ is prefinished with Eco-Shield™ a UV cured, high quality finish that provides a layer of protection against any damages to the flooring surface.