Water Damage Repair with Bamboo Floating Floor- Andover, MA

We installed this prefinished bamboo product in the lower-level of this home to replace a water-damaged bonus room. 

The lower level of this home had pretty extensive water damage. When we pulled up the damaged floor we also found water-damaged cork beneath.

The cork was glued down to the concrete with a troweled wood glue. We removed the cork and then scraped the glue off of the concrete to prep the water-damaged areas of cork for replacement. 

Unfortunately, as every job has unexpected things arise, cork was not readily available for purchase that day at any of the local distributors. In the interest of keeping the job on track and finishing on time, we substituted with rubber underlayment in place of cork. The cork and rubber underlayment were the same thickness and are very similar products. 

Most flooring installers would stop there but we decided to also add layer of QuietWalk underlayment padding on top of the cork and rubber. This really took this installation to another level of quality. 

There are so many underlayment pads out there, and tend to be very expensive, although EverWood Flooring only uses QuietWalk Underlayment pad. 

You can read all about this product on their website (see the Resources section at the bottom of this profile), but here are a few:
- Sound absorption
- Moisture protection
- Smoothes out minor sub-floor imperfections
- Made from recycled materials

Then we installed Teragren Strand Bamboo floating flooring, glued at the seams. Teragren Bamboo is regarded as one of the highest end, best Bamboo products out there. 

This product can be installed a number of ways over a number of different subfloors. In this case, the customer mainly chose this product based on color to match the existing Exotic Wenge flooring in other areas of their home. 

It is most often installed being nailed down or glued to a subfloor, but Teragren has such a good milling system that the boards can be floated and glued at the seams. This is how we installed this bamboo over QuietWalk underlayment. 

This type of installation can be very difficult for a homeowner where the product is not nailed and has no locking mechanism. Relying on glue to keep each row bonded to the next, we used blue tape on top of the boards to keep everything from separating during installation. For a homeowner, I would recommend either nailing or hiring a professional to glue the product to the floor or at the seams. 

A few words about Teragren Strand Bamboo...
This product is certified by USDA BioPreferred as 94% biobased, meaning that most of it is "...derived from plants and other renewable agricultural, marine, and forestry materials..." Even still, the product has a Janka ball rating of 3271, which makes it harder than oak. 

Quick product facts:

• 160% harder than oak (3271 Janka ball rating)
• Sustainable product
• Durable 9-step UV Cured Polyurethane coating system with aluminum oxide wear layer for abrasion resistance

Resources

For more information on Bio Preferred program see: 

http://www.biopreferred.gov/BioPreferred/faces/pages/AboutBioPreferred.xhtml

For more information on Teragren products see:

http://www.teragren.com/p_portfolio_tg.html

For more information on QuietWalk products see:

http://www.mpglobalproducts.com/products/fiber-products/quietwalk/