Cleaning Bamboo flooring – Sustainable but ….

We house cleaners are seeing new materials constantly — Bamboo flooring is a recent favorite.  First, a little background.  Bamboo is a grass which grows quickly and can be harvested every four to six years, making it the perfect sustainable flooring material.  Claims were made that it was harder than red oak and relatively water-resistant.  But experience is showing that the reality is different. More on that below.

Yikes – A Flooring Expert in my House Cleaning Technician Class!?

I recently did an HCT class in Seattle, Washington.  Attending the class was one of the top hard floor inspectors in the country.   “Inspector” is a top-level IICRC (Institute for Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification) or CleanTrust certification).  These inspectors are the guys who go around the country and the world to figure out what went wrong with a floor.  Talk about intimidating–this is the guy who taught me the IICRC course on stone floors.  Anyway, Bill Griffon caught me up on what they were finding out in the field.  What was of particular importance was how bamboo floors are holding up in use.

Bamboo turns out to be less hard and more water-sensitive than everyone thought

It turns out that bamboo flooring can be very moisture sensitive.  Bamboo is a dried grass.  It easily absorbs moisture and then swells, causing splitting and warping.  In addition, it seems clear that the claims of bamboo hardness had been overstated because of inapparopriate testing procedures.  In real life, it seems bamboo flooring can be dented by dog nails and such.

So what’s the take-away from all this?  If you are cleaning bamboo floors use as little moisture as possible.  Admittedly this may make it hard to get dirty floors truly clean, as it takes a given amount of water to move a given amount of dirt but it will help preserve the floor.  We have the very same issue with laminate flooring.  Following the logic of that similarity, we need to guard against using steam cleaners for this flooring too, especially steam mops which  generate high water vapour.  Obviously it is imperative to wipe up spills quickly and not put items or fixtures that might leak, like plants, on or over these floors.  There also are reports of problems when bamboo floors are installed over concrete slabs.  Imagine the future problems as their plastic finishes wear and degrade over time and traffic.

Stay Up-to-Date and Tuned-In

As we say in our HCT class, professionals must stay informed in their fields– including diligent searching for and reading about new developments in materials, fixtures and finishes.  All this shows us the importance of staying abreast of not only what is happening in the cleaning industry but in related industries as well.