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From: ransley on 16 Feb 2010 23:01
On Feb 16, 7:45 pm, Chris Shearer Cooper
<chris.shearer.coo...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I live in Colorado, and a few years ago had a bamboo floor installed
> in my kitchen and living room, and have been very disappointed.
> Despite the whole-house humidifier attached to the forced air heating
> system, the "planks" (is that the right word?) contract in the winter,
> and then kitchen debris finds its way into the cracks, and we end up
> with ugly black lines where the planks touch.
>
> So now we're wanting to replace the 20-year-old carpet in the upstairs
> with some kind of wood floor, and are not sure which way to go.
>
> The other complication, is that we need to live in these rooms while
> we're putting in new floors - we'll move all the furniture out of the
> unused bedroom, redo its floor, move my daughter into that bedroom,
> redo her floor, etc. so we whatever we use, it needs to be
> prefinished.
>
> There are some nice-looking engineered wood products, but we're
> concerned about the odors ... the off-gassing from a lot of those
> kinds of products gives us headaches, which pushes us towards solid
> wood, but then with solid wood you can't install a floating floor, so
> I'm worried we would get the gap problem again.  And then again, I'm
> wondering if it's maybe the offgassing from the prefinish that gives
> us the headache, in which case for the headache it wouldn't matter if
> we chose solid vs. engineered vs. laminate.
>
> Was the guy at Home Depot right, that the more traditional woods (oak,
> for example) do better in the dry climate of Colorado?
>
> Thanks,
> Chris

If a wood floor is installed without opening up packages and allow to
aclimatize to the lower humidity of your home this can happen, its not
a bamboo problem its a installer problem, a real pro has a moisture
meter handy. For all you know the floor was stored in a very humid
place before you got it, it can take weeks to aclimatize wood to a
house before install. Did a store install it that sold it to you, then
there was a warranty, id call the manufacturer and ask.
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