On 02/16/2010 07:45 PM, Chris Shearer Cooper 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.

What is the humidifier set to? What is your humidity swing from winter
to summer?

Solid wood expands/contracts with humidity. No stopping it. Engineered
will move much less, it's basically plywood. The amount of expansion in
a solid wood floor will depend on the species. Look at the "%
Tangential Shrinkage" column in the table at
"http://www.woodbin.com/ref/wood/shrink_table.htm". The lower the
number, the less shrinkage you'll see as it dries.

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

I would expect most of the offgassing to be minimal in prefinished solid
and engineered flooring. Laminate will have some offgassing from the
resin in the core, though better grades will have less.

Was the guy at Home Depot right, that the more traditional woods (oak,
for example) do better in the dry climate of Colorado?

Bamboo behaves differently depending on whether it is horizontal,
vertical, or strand. In the vertical orientation it's supposed to
shrink less than oak--but that assumes it was properly acclimatized
before installation.

Chris