vinyl flooring uk

Solid Hardwood Floors - are a solid piece of hardwood cut into wood planks that are generally 3/4" thick. (Above ground level areas only, not recommended for concrete slabs.)

Recent innovations have opened the door for the design community to begin using less traditional materials in residential planning. This demand for unique flooring products, including cork, bamboo, rubber and others, has prompted the retailer to carry or at least have access to a wider range of interesting alternative flooring materials.

Proper care and maintenace in crucial to the life span of your flooring. But keeping you floors maintained is not as difficult as you might think. Regular sweeping or vacuuming and periodic thorough cleaning will keep your floors looking their best.

Longstrip Hardwood Floors - are really an engineered construction but with a long and wider plank. This allows the top layer to splice 2-3 rows of thin hardwood strips into one plank. Longstrip planks can be glued-down, stapled or floated over a wide variety of sub-floors and used almost anywhere in the home, including dry basements.

One of the oldest buiding materials known to man and is as popular today as it was a thousand years ago. Modern technology has allowed us to find more and more interesting stone and finishing it to a level of beauty unsurpassed by any other flooring material.

The process of taking Bamboo from its natural state and manufacturing it into a viable floor covering option is very difficult. The harvested Bamboo is fed through splitting and sizing machinery. The small strips are than planed down to their approximate size. Next, the rough-sized strips are kiln dried down to an 8-10% moisture content. This process can take 5 days, and is the most important step in the manufacturing process.

The strips are planed down on all 4 sides. As with all natural material, a color variance is evident. The coloring of bamboo is determined by its age. The strips are sorted by color and cut to size and then assembled and glued together. Under extreme heat and pressure the planks are fused together. The final shading will change depending on the finishing techniques used.

Bamboo flooring offers one of the most unique appearances of any floor covering product. However, most people do not know that Bamboo is a "grass" floor rather than a hardwood floor. All bamboo laminated plank flooring is actually harder than Northern Red Oak.

The assembled planks are planed again to achieve an even surface and smooth surface. Planks are then fed through machines that cut and shape the tongues and grooves. Finally the planks are finished, packaged and sent off for sale.

Bamboo is often seen as the flooring material of the future. It is readily available and, it naturally regenerates quickly into harvestable crops. Processed bamboo is durable and stable, which combined with its environmental friendliness, this "woody grass" is just beginning to make its mark.

1. North Flooring Company :: Vinyl Floor
... VINYLS Vinyl floors for kitchens, bathrooms, offices, factories, corridors and stairs, plain or patterned. Stell Road, Aberdeen AB11 5RW Tel. 01224 584700 Fax. 01224 584014 e-mail www.karndean.co.uk
http://www.northfloor.co.uk/vinyls.html