HARDwood Decisions

Bamboo is the cool kid on the hardwood block. Cork is also pretty popular. I specialize in hardwood floors and a beautiful floor is a beautiful thing. I'm old school and not so easily taken in by the promise of a renewable or recycled resource.

Let's take a look at bamboo first. Sure, it's a grass and grows more quickly than those hairs in Uncle Ivan's nose and ears... BUT even carbonized darker bamboos are softer than Black Walnut (considered a soft hardwood). Spiked heels wreak havoc on these floors. Got a dog or children? As my mafioso friends would say: "Fuggetabout it!" It's difficult to trash a wood substitute that matures in about  three years, regenerates without replanting and requires minimal pesticides, but if I don't trash it, your house guests will thrash it. Moreover, bamboo isn't as green as many manufacturers would have you believe. Bona fide forests are being cleared to grow it and fertilizers are being used to increase crop yields for this monoculture.

So, let's examine the world of cork. It's made from the bark of the cork oak. Some manufacturers recycle wine corks to make their corks tiles and floors. Others use fresh bark which is harvested by peeling it away from the trunk and branches every 9 - 12 years. These manufacturers claim that bark harvesting does not necessitate the felling of the tree. The cork oak should regrow its bark within a decade. As these trees can live to 200 years or more, it means that the cork can be harvested many times over. Cork offers a springiness and give that hardwood and bamboo simply do not possess. Plus, it's hypoallergenic because the wood is mildew and mold resistant. There are lots of drawbacks to these floors though - they're more expensive than bamboo, you can't mop them, they become discolored when in direct sun and they will give way to heavy furniture and become damaged if the furniture doesn't have coasters underneath. Like bamboo flooring manufacturers, cork flooring manufacturers are under no obligation to use environmentally friendly practices, so the onus is upon consumers to do their research.

Now oak takes about 120 years to grow to maturity, and that's what I currently have to work with in the home. The original flooring from 1923 is still durable enough to reclaim, although I dare not sand it. The flooring is too thin to be sanded and staining would add cost to my project. So instead, I'll screen and urethane it. Screening is done with a buffer that uses sandpaper with holes in it that resemble a window screen. This allows wood dust to exit without plugging the sanding screen. Screening is a way of cleaning the surface of a floor up without removing too much wood. There are different grits of screen just like sandpaper. We'll use approximately 100 grit screens for this gentle job.

The flooring in the halls, however, must be totally replaced. Even though hardwood floors are more expensive than bamboo and cork floors, it will still be cheaper and greener to patch the hallway with 1/2" by 2" white oak strip flooring.  All said and done, the materials to patch, screen and urethane our existing floors will probably run us around $400. This is a heck of a lot less than ANY other choice of materials - green or otherwise.

Just for your information:
Installation fee for hardwood or bamboo flooring is approximately $4 per square foot + glue.

If you're looking for reasonably priced flooring materials, someone I trust is: ggwoodfloors.com

Spring Cleaning (and Greening)

Summer's coming but, technically, it's still spring and I'm attempting to clean up some of my dirty habits.

GREEN UP # 1
My mother would frown, the aunt's may whisper... when they hear I wash my clothes in cold water instead of hot. I've tried becoming more aware of my environmental impact with easy changes like this. Simple switches are huge money and energy savers, though. Washing machines produce over 500 pounds of CO2 a year when run on hot water. Clothes get just as clean and may last longer when laundered in cold water.

GREEN UP #2
Cleaning products that many of us grew up with off-gas. I know, it sounds kind of foul, and it is. The products throw off Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which can affect your home environment and your health. Home cleaning products can make the air in our houses 2-5 times as toxic as the polluted Los Angeles air I breathe outside each day! In effect, just by cleaning with mom's tried and true products, we're contributing greatly to our city's smog problems. So check out a few tips that I've tried to put into practice:

There are so many "green" products out there. Be a discerning consumer when confronted with these buzz words:
Biodegradable: This is an unregulated term that's only meaningful if it specifies the amount of time it takes for the product to decompose, as most substances will eventually biodegrade over time given the right conditions, such as sunlight.
Non-toxic: There's no official definition or third-party verification for this claim. Don't trust it.
Organic: Household cleaning products aren't regulated by the Organic Foods Production Act, but some of their ingredients, such as plant oils, can be labeled "certified organic."

For more info, see ecolabels.org.

Plus, here are a list of some cleaning ingredients to avoid:
Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs), common in detergents and disinfectants and are suspected hormone disruptors.
Ammonia is poisonous when swallowed, extremely irritating to respiratory passages when inhaled and can burn the skin on contact.
Butyl cellosolve (aka butyl glycol, ethylene glycol monobutyl) is poisonous when swallowed and a lung-tissue irritant.
Chlorine bleach (aka sodium hypochlorite), an all-purpose whitening agent, can irritate the lungs and eyes and in waterways can become toxic organochlorines.
Diethanolamine (DEA) can combine with nitrosomes (often-undisclosed preservatives) to produce carcinogenic nitrosamines that penetrate skin.
Phosphates soften water for detergents but contribute to algae blooms in our waterways which can kill off fish populations in our rivers, lakes and oceans.
Sodium hydroxide, found in drain, metal and oven cleaners, is extremely irritating to eyes, nose and throat and can burn those tissues on contact.
Sodium lauryl sulfate, a common sudsing agent, can penetrate the skin and cause contact dermatitis.