Chemically Sensitive Flooring

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What Chemically Sensitive Flooring to Choose?

Chemically Sensitive Flooring is a hot subject today!
Not only are there a lot of children with asthma, allergies and chemical sensitivities today but a growing population of adults. Many young adults leave home for college and find what in their dorm room? CARPET!!! What could be worse for a healthy person or an asthmatic or allergic than cheap industrial carpeting. With the backing holding all kinds of glues that offgas to the positive charge in plastic fibers that attracts every contaminant on the planet, there is nothing good about carpet. Statistics of kids with these conditions can be alarming. In fact the EPA report on asthma is not kind at all to building products like paints, glues and carpeting and especially to plastics like vinyls.

Once considered something that children would outgrow in time, the incidence of chronic asthma, allergy and chemically sensitivity is now starting to impact young and old alike. It is alarming to see the rapid growth in these illnesses in adults in just the last few years according to the AAAAI statistics pages.

So what would be a good chemically sensitive flooring product for those with asthma, allergy and chemical sensitivity? Oddly enough it would not be anything you can buy in a home center and it would not be anything new or made of any type of petrochemical based plastic… that is for sure. Good old fashioned linoleum is the first and most reliable choice recommended by doctors who treat these illnesses. When it comes to linoleum today that brings you to Forbo, the only international company making old fashioned, original recipe, linseed oil based flooring. In fact they still make it the same way it was made in 1860. Rolled out like pie dough and pressed onto jute backing this colorful, natural plastic is all natural and spectacularly beautiful as well.

What is even more remarkable today is the fact that ForboForbo Environmental Product Declaration has combined their Marmoleum with the floating floor concept that has been around for many years. The benefit to that is simple. Easier installation that can be done by diy-ers and novices. The product requires a little basic carpentry cutting and fitting experience but simply snaps together without tools or tapping blocks and is really worth its weight in gold when it brings relief to a person with asthma, allergy or who is chemically sensitive. Simply gluing the flooring to the backing in the factory means that very little if any off-gassing is taking place in the factory. Marmoleum Click is the product that really has changed life for so many people today.

Do you need more information… take a look at the Forbo Environmental Product Declaration that discusses eco-toxicity and the impact on human health.

Marmoleum Basement Flooring, a good choice?

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Is Linoleum by Marmoleum Basement Flooring a good choice?

Yes, original Forbo Linoleum is certainly a great choice for a basement floor. Marmoleum basement flooring borderThe thing that people really like about marmoleum basement flooring, and especially the one and only original Marmoleum resilient flooring is the warmth. Don’t misunderstand that the floor is actually warmer than other floors at all. It just feels that way. It’s just the way our bodies react that putting your feet on ceramic tile or linoleum would have the linoleum feel warmer.

 

Pick the Colors of your Marmoleum Basement Flooring & Furnishings First! For basements, the flooring is the single most significant design element. Since the rooms are usually large and open and they have more floor space than any other room in the home that color can dominate a design. When you pick the wrong color for a basement floor it is usually tragic since it is such a big investment. For that reason, it is a great and wise choice to pick the floor and furnishings in tandem before settling on paint colors or accessories, since they can always be adjusted.

People are always worried about moisture and flooding in the basement and with good reason. While a premium floating floor can be an easy and reasonably priced option it is not cheap. Fortunately, when a proper moisture test is performed you can rest easy. Many installers still use the old fashioned and reasonably reliable calcium chloride method. A newer method uses a meter that is held against the floor with modest reliability. Lastly is the method of drilling holes and inserting electronic probes that register in percentages or temperature. Rapid RH is one of the better methods out there today.

Once you know whether there is significant moisture in a slab that may exceed recommendations for your particular product, you can pick a way to address it. In many cases simply rolling out a padding / vapor barrier may do the trick. Often times it is suggested to cut the piece larger than the room and allow it to run up the wall to be covered by the base trim. This is a good practice to do this. The other options may be to paint on a moisture limiting product which is like painting on a latex rubber coating. The last, most expensive and most chemically undesirable would be to trowel out an epoxy coating. This would typically be used when someone absolutely has to have resilient sheet or tile. Hazardous to breathe in and hard to work with, epoxy moisture mitigation coatings must be skim coated over with a cementious mix before installing the finished floor.

Once all the details are taken care of, Marmoleum basement flooring can be a great choice.

Battleship Linoleum Flooring: Where Did It Go?

Battleship Linoleum Flooring. Why did it go out of style?

Battleship Linoleum seems to be the term that a lot of the empty-nesters use to describe the flooring they grew up with. Why did it go out of production and why did it become so hard to find? There are three main reasons.

1. Plastics

Everyone of a certain age remembers “The Graduate,” where Dustin Hoffman’s character is given the tip of a lifetime ― go into the plastics industry. Plastics certainly made a lot of companies and a lot more people rich by bringing cheaper imitation products to the marketplace.

Battleship Linoleum Plastics Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate

Unfortunately, Marmoleum was one of the casualties. All the other linoleum companies went under or practically died eventually because of cheaper, faster American vinyl plastic.

2. Lasts Too Long

With the amazing boom in prosperity back in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans wanted to upgrade everything they owned to the newest and most advanced luxury option. Many were still standing on linoleum floors from the 1920s and 1930s and were just plain sick of it. In a nutshell, linoleum simply lasted too long for many people’s tastes.

3. Complex Installation

With the advent of click together linoleum, there is a resurgence of natural flooring being installed. Too few trained installers in the marketplace means that prices go up with supply and demand and many folks are priced out of the market when they get a quote for sheet goods. Tile installations and click are a good compromise when the budget is limited.

Battleship Linoleum Today

The navies of the world also have a desire to be fashionable. Sadly, that often means that toxic and hazardous epoxy paints are often being used in place of naturally durable and beautiful battleship linoleum. The good news is that the armies of the world are still specifying old fashioned lino roll goods for their barracks. Additionally, we already know that schools and hospitals are crazy about the stuff because it holds up.

Battleship Linoleum

For more information on commercial-grade linoleum flooring, please contact us at GreenHomeFloors at 844-356-6784 or visit www.greenhomefloors.com