Bamboo Floor Maintenance

LESLIE: Margaret in Hawaii needs some help with a flooring [1] situation. What’s going on?

MARGARET: Well, we have a brand new house and we’ve installed natural bamboo on all of the floors [2] and …

TOM: Aw, that’s beautiful flooring.

MARGARET: It’s beautiful. But I’m concerned about the maintenance on it, especially since we have three dogs [3].

TOM: OK.

MARGARET: Right now I’m getting used to the scratches (Leslie chuckles) but it’s the paw prints. I’m not sure how to clean the floor [4] without ruining the finish on it.

TOM: Well, generally if you use a very mild soap – like Murphy’s oil soap [5] we use on our hardwood floors – it works really, really well. The key is to not use a lot of water but I will say that bamboo is very, very durable and water-tolerant. It’s the finish that you’re really concerned about, so you just don’t want to oversaturate it. But bamboo is a really tough floor and most of the finishes today – was it prefinished when you put it down?

MARGARET: Yes.

TOM: Yeah, so it’s probably an aluminum-oxide finish which is pretty durable, so I would just tell you to use a gentle floor solution like Murphy’s oil soap and not to use too much water. It is a lot of maintenance but, you know, that’s what you get when you have dogs and kids at the same time. (Leslie chuckles)

MARGARET: And I was just – I had another question. If you know like how does it look like – other hardwood floors I don’t mind the look after they’ve worn a little bit.

TOM: Mm-hmm.

MARGARET: Will bamboo do the same type of thing?

TOM: Not really because bamboo is extremely hard.

MARGARET: OK.

TOM: So the finish will wear eventually but I don’t think you’re going to see the floor actually physically wear down like you would with, say, another type of hardwood.