Sunday 3 May 2009

Eco Flooring Options - Where to Start

What are the available solutions for Eco Flooring and how are they different? There are several, proven floor covering options for Eco Friendly conscious consumers. Some you may be aware of, some you may not. There is a lot of information available on Green and Eco floors. The basic types can be considered as hard surface and soft surface textile.

Hard surface Eco flooring products are the most commonly heard about. Bamboo has gained a lot of popularity in recent years due to it's great sustainability factor. It grows very quick and can be processed into a very nice wood looking floor. One thing to keep in mind is that lower priced Bamboo floors tend to have fairly significant levels of chemicals, including formaldehyde, so off gasing can be an issue after installation and over time. If considering Bamboo, get a better quality product and stay away from the cheap stuff.

Another, rapidly growing hard surface Eco floor type is Cork. Cork is harvested from the outer part of the tree, so the tree itself is not killed in the process and more Cork can be taken from the same tree years later. This makes Cork a great Eco floocovering option as it is very sustainable. Cork is very durable, provides a great insulation factor for temperature and noise and is even hypo allergenic in some forms. It also can give a very unique look to a room.

Some actually consider true, solid, hardwood floors as an Eco option. True, trees are harvested for the final product. However, the thought is that the floor that comes as an end result is a floor that will last in most cases the life of the home, without need for replacing with other flooring. This eliminates product going to the landfill. When the hardwood floor is no longer needed, it is very landfill friendly as it is a natural product and not synthetic.

There are soft surface textile options as well for purchasing Green/Eco flooring. One very popular carpet is called P.E.T Carpet (Polyethylene terephthalate). This carpet style's yarn is manufactured from 100% recycled plastic bottles. Typically these bottles cannot be used for recycling back into use for human liquid consumption so a large amount annually of this waste is used back into the process for Carpet. This type of carpet does has a great wear factor and is very resistant to most forms of stains.

A second option is a recent breakthrough in Eco Carpet as a yarn made from a fiber from DuPont called Sorona. This fiber is partially manufactured from Corn Syrup which is an extremely sustainable product and also biodegradable.

There are many choices available in flooring for an Eco friendly floor. Once you decide if you want a hard surface or soft surface, you can then decide which of the options best fit your budget.

For great floor covering deals on P.E.T carpet and other Eco flooring, be sure to check out Owen Carpet Company for your Discount Carpet needs.

The author, Eric Dyer is an Owner of Owen Carpet based in Dalton, Ga. Owen Carpet was featured by NBC's Today show as the #1 place in America to buy Floorcovering.
For more information you can visit, http://www.owencarpet.com or call Owen Carpet at 1-800-626-6936.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_M_Dyer

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