Flooring Recommdendations

[FastStache]

I'm looking to remove some old carpet from a home and replace it with something else.  I live it Florida and have a young daughter which I would like to keep safe. Plus, I would like to know if there is any flooring that can help with energy costs.

I would like to try my hand at DIY with this over the long term. I'm not very handy but I can usually work my way through a home project.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Slab or crawl space?

[FastStache]

Slab, so I'm guessing I want very little insulation to the floor underneath to let the coolness come through?

[Mississippi Mudstache]

My go-to flooring choice is real hardwood. You can get pre-finished for ~$3, it looks classy, reasonably simple to DIY, very easy to clean, and it wears well. Unfortunately, it is a lot of extra work and expense to put it down on a slab, so that's out. I would look into engineered hardwood instead, but I don't have any personal experience with that. I do not like laminate, period. It looks fake and it feels fake, no matter how much you spend on it. Tile is an option on a slab, but it's a lot of work, and I find the grout lines annoyingly difficult to keep clean. I don't think your choice of flooring is going to have much impact on energy efficiency in a house on a slab.

[greaper007]

Tile seems to be the preferred choice in Florida and especially with your situation (slab).    DIY is definitely doable but it is hard to do a good job with tile without some experience.

Energy wise, carpet is probably the best insulator for a slab foundation.

[mrF]

a little more expensive than cheaper laminate, I really like cork flooring.    it's often laminated to an hdf substrate, but it has properties which make it unique from the laminate or engineered floors.   

[Greg]

I live it Florida and have a young daughter which I would like to keep safe. Plus, I would like to know if there is any flooring that can help with energy costs

Safe how?  From chemicals and poisons in the flooring materials?  From head bonks?

I'd suggest either glue-down Marmoleum for a firm, smooth natural floor, or a cork or Marmoleum Click floating floor.

[Frankies Girl]

I live near the gulf coast, and had engineered hardwood installed a few years ago. It's supposed to be more stable than hardwood (so better for humidity) and we had it glued to the slab. It took the installers about 3 days total to do the whole house (about 1100 sq ft) but that was also because they needed to level the slab (float material) for the direct application. The glue was also a built-in vapor barrier which you'd need to worry about if you're doing a direct application to the slab - other option would have been a "floating" floor with some sort of insert barrier between the wood and the slab. Any way you look at it, it's not something I'd attempt DIY myself, and it can run up your expenses...

Engineered hardwood looks great and you can't tell the difference between it and hardwood, but it can't be refinished unless the veneer is a decent thickness. Ours is a dark wood, and while it looks beautiful and we love it, it shows dust bunnies/dirt and scratches VERY well. I'd go with a medium/light wood color if we did it again.

[plantingourpennies]

We're in FL and are planning on redoing our floors next year.  We're leaning toward porcelain tile, but are aiming for the wood-look tile since hardwood would be "traditional" in our beach cottage-style home.  Personally, I would never do real wood floors in FL - the humidity and dealing with the grittiness of sand wearing off finishes would drive me absolutely nuts.  Our neighbors paid a small fortune to install bamboo flooring throughout their entire house a few years ago and regretted it about 5 minutes after the installers left. 

With tile, aim for a high PEI rating so you don't have to worry about what kind of grittiness the kiddos bring in on the bottom of their shoes when they don't bother to wipe their feet off at the door.  We're aiming PEI 4 or above. 

[bogart]

I like laminate just fine and its a cinch to install and easy to keep clean (I don't get the stuff that looks like tile, so there are no "grout lines" to worry about keeping clean).  I'll admit it:  the appearance of my floors is not a high priority in my life, so YMMV.

[begood]

I have lived with tile floors in Florida, and though they are nice and cool to the touch, they are super hard on kids heads and very, very slippery when wet, which ours always seemed to be! I ended up making a path of towels from the lanai to the bedroom to try to cut down on slip-and-bonks.

So I'd pick laminate over tile, at least in high traffic areas.

[citrine]

We have Pergo engineered wood in our basement over the concrete slab and it has held up amazingly well over the last three years.  We did not put a layer underneath...just whatever the plank has on it.  Not that difficult of a diy.  We also have three active cats so there is a lot of running around and sliding on the floors but no scratches :)

[San]

We're replacing old flooring with bamboo, which we're really happy with. It has a lot of the same qualities as hardwood, but it's more sustainable, and at least in our area, we can purchase it at a reasonable price (slightly more expensive than a laminate, less expensive than hardwood). You can get more expensive bamboo with hardwood type finishes, but I like the natural blonde of the bamboo better anyway in this case.

[Spork]

We have Pergo engineered wood in our basement over the concrete slab and it has held up amazingly well over the last three years.  We did not put a layer underneath...just whatever the plank has on it.  Not that difficult of a diy.  We also have three active cats so there is a lot of running around and sliding on the floors but no scratches :)

One thing to add here.... I had a house that was Pergo (and some off brand laminate) from one end to the other.   If you go for laminate, the important thing to consider is what the core of the product is made of.  DO NOT buy any that has a core made of compressed/recycled paper.  Instead, you want one with a core made of wood (or chipped wood) and epoxy.

The paper core looks fine, but it is extremely sensitive to getting wet.  Spills or plumbing problems can ruin a large portion of your floor in very little time.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

We're replacing old flooring with bamboo, which we're really happy with. It has a lot of the same qualities as hardwood, but it's more sustainable...

I love the look of bamboo as well, but what makes you think that bamboo grown in China and shipped to the U.S. is more sustainable than local, ubiquitous oak or maple? I certainly understand the preference to avoid tropical hardwoods, but they tend to be very anti-Mustachian in terms of price anyway, without even delving into their ecological impact (which varies by species).

[Spork]

We're replacing old flooring with bamboo, which we're really happy with. It has a lot of the same qualities as hardwood, but it's more sustainable...

I love the look of bamboo as well, but what makes you think that bamboo grown in China and shipped to the U.S. is more sustainable than local, ubiquitous oak or maple? I certainly understand the preference to avoid tropical hardwoods, but they tend to be very anti-Mustachian in terms of price anyway, without even delving into their ecological impact (which varies by species).

You can also commonly find local hardwoods recycled on craigslist -- which is very sustainable. 

I'll warn you though: it can be a whole lot of work.

[zolotiyeruki]

As the father of a bunch of young 'uns, and having lived with several types of flooring (vinyl, carpet, hardwood, tile), I'd say go with tile.  Here's why:

1) Spill-proof.  This has been a source of a lot of annoyance in our current home, which has otherwise-beautiful maple floors in the kitchen.
2) Durable.  A tiny pebble got caught on the bottom of one of our kitchen chairs, and made a nice scratch in the finish.
3) Easy to clean.  I strongly recommend that you get a DARK GROUT to hide the dirt!
4) Cool to the touch, extra thermal mass.
5) DIY-able.  In our last home we installed about 500 sq ft of tile ourselves right to the slab.  It wasn't perfect (my first time tiling), but it still turned out quite well.

Drawbacks:
A) It hurts when you fall on it, and is likely to break plates and glasses if they fall on it.
B) It *can* be very slippery when wet.  I'd suggest you get a type that has some sort of texture to it, so the water cannot form a slippery surface.

[Trudie]

One choice on concrete is to just do refinished concrete.  It can be given a natural or tile look.  You can cover certain areas with area rugs, if necessary.

I have bamboo and like the look of it, but it scratches very easily.

[San]

We're replacing old flooring with bamboo, which we're really happy with. It has a lot of the same qualities as hardwood, but it's more sustainable...

I love the look of bamboo as well, but what makes you think that bamboo grown in China and shipped to the U.S. is more sustainable than local, ubiquitous oak or maple? I certainly understand the preference to avoid tropical hardwoods, but they tend to be very anti-Mustachian in terms of price anyway, without even delving into their ecological impact (which varies by species).

That's a completely fair point actually. I was considering purely from a growing standpoint. And I stand by that, especially compared to those tropical hardwoods (which aren't even a consideration). But you are right that the shipping from China to here is not at all sustainable. There are some growers in the US, but I would be pretty naïve to think that the stuff we're getting is coming from them. Local hardwood, new, is prohibitively expensive where I live.

We are actually reusing the original hardwood flooring in most of the house. But one area was so badly damaged that we don't have enough to work with. So with all of the other things we are doing, we decided to compromise on the flooring in the kitchen on a number of factors. For time and money available, the bamboo is the best choice, is not synthetic, is sustainably harvested (if not sustainably shipped), and we can pick it up and use it immediately, as is. We spent two months looking locally for someone with used hardwood in our area, and nothing was working out, and we're ready any day to put the flooring down. So for us, it's a deliberate decision, and I would still not hesitate to recommend it as a decent option if someone is purchasing new material.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

We're replacing old flooring with bamboo, which we're really happy with. It has a lot of the same qualities as hardwood, but it's more sustainable...

I love the look of bamboo as well, but what makes you think that bamboo grown in China and shipped to the U.S. is more sustainable than local, ubiquitous oak or maple? I certainly understand the preference to avoid tropical hardwoods, but they tend to be very anti-Mustachian in terms of price anyway, without even delving into their ecological impact (which varies by species).

That's a completely fair point actually. I was considering purely from a growing standpoint. And I stand by that, especially compared to those tropical hardwoods (which aren't even a consideration).

Bamboo gets a lot of accolades because it is harvested more quickly than domestic hardwoods. However, that is hardly the whole picture. All you are measuring with the ideal economic rotation age of a perennial crop - whether that crop is bamboo, eucalyptus, pine, or hardwood - is the point at which an additional year's growth of the crop falls below the average annual growth gained over the entire life of the crop. In forestry, we call this the maximum mean annual increment. This varies by species, region, genetics, etc.

A shorter time to maximum mean annual increment generally indicates a faster growing crop, but not always. Brazilian eucalyptus grows to economic maturity in about 6 years, but produces more biomass per acre per year than bamboo harvested on a 2-year rotation. It is technically a "tropical hardwood", but the company that grows and markets Brazilian eucalyptus as hardwood flooring under the brand name "Lyptus" does not clear native hardwood forests - rather, they have claimed areas that were managed for 100+ years as sugar cane plantations. In my opinion, Lyptus has a much stronger claim for being "sustainable" than bamboo, yet people seem to be inherently wary of any wood product that comes from Brazil.

More to the point, I don't believe a product cannot be described as anything other than sustainable as long as it is managed sustainably. In other words, even if it takes 50 years to regenerate a mature oak forest, there is no problem with harvesting and using oak as long as we are not using more than we are growing. On the other side, you wouldn't say that cotton is a more sustainable fiber than bamboo simply because we can harvest cotton in 6 months, would you? That is a very small part of the big picture. The primary enemy of our domestic forests is not the forest industry, but the development of land for other uses - namely housing and commerce.

So for us, it's a deliberate decision, and I would still not hesitate to recommend it as a decent option if someone is purchasing new material.

I have no qualms at all with your decision. I think that bamboo is a great choice for a floor in terms of durability and sustainability. I was simply trying to point out that bamboo is not an inherently better choice than the equally durable and sustainable domestic hardwoods.

[FastStache]

As the father of a bunch of young 'uns, and having lived with several types of flooring (vinyl, carpet, hardwood, tile), I'd say go with tile.  Here's why:

1) Spill-proof.  This has been a source of a lot of annoyance in our current home, which has otherwise-beautiful maple floors in the kitchen.
2) Durable.  A tiny pebble got caught on the bottom of one of our kitchen chairs, and made a nice scratch in the finish.
3) Easy to clean.  I strongly recommend that you get a DARK GROUT to hide the dirt!
4) Cool to the touch, extra thermal mass.
5) DIY-able.  In our last home we installed about 500 sq ft of tile ourselves right to the slab.  It wasn't perfect (my first time tiling), but it still turned out quite well.

Drawbacks:
A) It hurts when you fall on it, and is likely to break plates and glasses if they fall on it.
B) It *can* be very slippery when wet.  I'd suggest you get a type that has some sort of texture to it, so the water cannot form a slippery surface.

We are looking at some ceramic tiles in the 99 cent range and hoping to find some better deals.

Our criteria at the moment
Color - Dark Grays
Grade I
PEI of 3 or higher
Vitreous tile
COF of at least .5 and prefer higher than .6 to keep the fails down.

Any good sites out there?