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Hardwood floors can be re-sanded and refinished many times over, generating no waste. Vinyl floors get scratched and then thrown away. Wood is renewable, vinyl
by abakker 3y ago
Hardwood floors can be re-sanded and refinished many times over, generating no waste. Vinyl floors get scratched and then thrown away. Wood is renewable, vinyl comes from oil wells. I'm not certain this is actually logical.
- trgn 3y agoAnd you feel it, barefoot, touching it, it feels more natural. Hardwood floors cleans better too, more hygienic. Hard to put into words.
- bluGill 3y agoHardwood is always covered in a plastic finish. Yes it feels different, but it is still plastic.
- cinntaile 3y agoI don't know where you got this from, but I can assure you that's not correct.
- trgn 3y agoIs it? Are your referring to the varnish that's applied after?
- thunfischbrot 3y agoThat's not correct. While many people choose polyurethane finished wood since it is less likely to stain from liquids, oils and varnishes are popular as well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_flooring#Finishing,_buffing,_sanding_and_drying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_flooring#Finishing,_buffi...
- bhandziuk 3y agoPolyurethane is one type of varnish so if you're going to contrast it you'll have to be more specific (phenolic resin or alkyd resin) Usually oils would be combined with some other varnish, especially on a floor, because they offer nearly zero abrasion or water resistance. You'd think oil finishes like boiled linseed oil or tung oil would offer some water protection because of the oil but they don't. Better than wax or nothing but much worse than varnishes. This is a table from a book on my shelf by Bob Flexner on the subject, Understanding Wood Finishes. It's a good reference https://imgur.com/a/TzacsLs https://imgur.com/a/TzacsLs
- devonkim 3y agoHardwax oils are also used but oftentimes have quite bad VOCs. However, I’m familiar with at least one manufacturer that has low/no VOC oils which certainly shows it’s possible but perhaps there’s a good technical explanation for why VOCs are so common in these oil treatments.
- bhandziuk 3y agoI've not used any hard wax oil finish. I'm surprised reading this [1] though that it offers "Great wear-, water- and heat resistance". But I guess that's from the company also claiming that Monocoat only takes one coat. But, what I'm understanding from that link is also that maybe the curing accelerators have VOCs so maybe the hard wax oils without accelerators don't have the VOC content (?) [1]: https://www.rubiomonocoatusa.com/blogs/blog/what-is-hardwax-oil https://www.rubiomonocoatusa.com/blogs/blog/what-is-hardwax-...
- 3y ago
- balls187 3y agoDon’t wear outdoor shoes inside. We asians figured this out generations ago.
- Jerrrry 3y agobased and culture-vs.-race-pilled.
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y agoAre there cultures where people actually wear shoes throughout their homes? Taking your shoes off is absolutely not a uniquely asian thing.
- balls187 3y agoBack home, not only do we not wear shoes in the house, we wash our feet anytime we enter after leaving the house.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago> Are there cultures where people actually wear shoes throughout their homes? American culture? Way too many movies I've watched feature americans wearing shoes while lying down on their beds. Always weirded me out.
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y agoI always assumed that was just a television thing.
- Nursie 3y agoDepends really, some people are fussy about the removal of shoes in the home in the UK and some aren't. I'm sure you can guess by the way I say it which end I'm at. I wear shoes around my house because if I don't, as a home-worker, I don't wear shoes very often, and then my feet and ankles start to get painful. I try to segregate indoor and outdoor shoes, but am not very successful at this, and have yet to find slippers which are supportive enough.
- hcurtiss 3y agoWe may be an anomaly, but we have 13.5mm laminates[1] which I'd say were relatively high grade when we put them in. The product we used didn't come with stair kits so we had to do the staircase with oak stained to match. We have two full-size golden retrievers. Eight years later, the laminates look like the day we installed them -- literally. The oak is all scratched up and will take a lot of work to refinish. [2] I was apprehensive about the laminates, and I'm definitely no Captain Planet, but I'll never have anything else. *edited to add imgur link. 1. https://www.pacmatpure.com/product/calypso-collection/ https://www.pacmatpure.com/product/calypso-collection/ 2. https://imgur.com/a/9QI5bC2 https://imgur.com/a/9QI5bC2
- LoganDark 3y agoDoes this page ever actually load?
- xyzzyz 3y agoLaminates are closer to hardwood flooring than to vinyl. Put it in simplest terms, they are basically the same as hardwood flooring, but you can only sand and refinish them maybe once or twice. This limits their lifespan, from 100+ years of full hardwood flooring to “only” a 30-40 years for laminate. Vinyl, on the other hand, is completely different, and is unlikely to survive daily use in serviceable state for more than 20 years, typically even less than that.
- 3y ago
- duxup 3y ago> Vinyl floors get scratched That's pretty hard to do on modern vinyl floors. Vinyl gets a bad rap because there were a lot of low end bad products, now there are some amazingly durable options.
- obscurette 3y agoMy house has original oak floors installed 85 years ago and there is still enough material left for 2-3 sandings.
- holoduke 3y agoBuy you have ceramic alternatives. Wood looking ad well.Good in combination with floor heating and probably last for a 1000 years.
- dylan604 3y agoCeramic flooring is so much colder than a real wood floor to me. I have no numerical data to offer as evidence to how it feels to me. However, walking into a house that has solid tile flooring vs a house with real wood flooring has a night/day difference in feel. I'm not necessarily just talking about F°/C° "colder". It's just a lot less "feels like home" with tile flooring.
- holoduke 3y agoYes you need to have floor heating. Here in the netherlands pretty standard in new houses. The tiles can look really like wood. Its expensive though and not easy to replace. No floor heating would be too cold indeed.
- dylan604 3y agoLike I mentioned, I was using the term "colder" much less in the sense of temperature/heat, but more in the sense of less inviting. Tile floors do not feel cozy. There's a sense of harshness. They are also much more active acoustically as well. Yes, I know furniture and rugs will mitigate some of that, but it's just not something that feels inviting. It's great for a bathroom or kitchen, but for living spaces and bedrooms, it's just not the right feel, to me.
- JAlexoid 3y ago> generating no waste Have you ever redone flooring? Because there's definitely waste when hardwood floors are refinished. Arguably equal to replacing a segment of PVC flooring. But... The amount reflooring we do, it's not even a concern. Even if PVC comes from oil - flooring has years of service and isn't burned for fuel. It's what we call "durable goods". Quality PVC flooring doesn't scratch easily and doesn't require polyurethane refinishing. Reducing animal sourced food consumption would have a bigger impact, than abstaining from PVC floor planks.
- gopher_space 3y agoHaving worked on and lived with both, I'd rather cut out a section of parquet and replace it than refinish a hardwood floor. IMHO the problem with hardwood is that it takes regular maintenance that nobody really wants to do. The luminous floors in old buildings look that way because they've been oiled and buffed by people on their hands and knees for a hundred years.
- JAlexoid 3y agoI'm not saying that hardwood floors are bad. I'm saying that PVC or laminate flooring(much more common) is absolutely not a concern for climate change. "They come from oil" is an illogical argument for durable goods. In addition - when you cut a part of the hardwood flooring, your new piece will not look the same without a lot of work. Specially for hardwood flooring that is more than a few decades old.
- balls187 3y agoThey can be, but how often are they in the time a home is owned by a single person? I mean if you care about waste single family homes are very inefficient.
- bastardoperator 3y agoYou're right if we're not accounting for time, energy, work, money, and being displaced while they're refinishing said floor in your waste assessment. My last house had real wood floors, you can't be there when it's happening, even water based lacquers have toxic fumes and particulates. Vinyl is cheaper, stronger, less prone to scratches than wood, more water resistant, and requires minimum maintenance and upkeep cost. Vinyl is also recyclable...