Bamboo, Cork, & Clay Tile for Natural Home Design

Video Transcript

"Okay now we’re going to talk a little bit about floorings. One flooring a lot us have in our homes that we don’t even know we have and we can utilize is a concrete slab. A concrete slab, you can strip your wall to wall carpeting and take the toxicity out of your home and stain your slab in a natural method. You can have it acid stained and it will last a little longer but it’s a little toxic and there is some outgassing initially. But it’s beautiful, it has a wonderful feel to it, and it’s natural, and it’s something you already have so if you’re trying to save money that’s one option for you. If you want to go a little further you can look into some of the other natural floorings, some of them are a little expensive. Cork and bamboo are two of my favorites. They are used a lot, they are a little more pricey than regular tile but the feel that they give is just wonderful. They have a number of different styles, different patterns and with more of an open weave or a tighter weave so you see smaller lines or larger lines. You can actually see the bamboo where it came together, It’s all compressed, even the cork, it’s a compressed. It’s kind of manufactured with healthy glues and binders, whatever they use to put it together so that it’s not outgassing like regular floorings. So those are two really good options for you to look at other than the concrete. Then there’s other options like clay tiles. There’s fired clay, saltillo, Mexican pavers which I encourage, they’re natural, they stay cool in the summer. If you use a radiant heating underneath the Mexican pavers or the saltillo tile you can keep them really warm so when you get up you can walk on warm tile, that’s a really great feature. There’s the enameled or fired clay tile, this one is actually a 50% recycled glass and clay, fired clay. And it’s beautiful, it would be great on floors. And even for your decking they have a recycled fiberboard which is recycled wood and it’s compressed together and makes a really durable decking material that’s not going the shred and come apart like natural wood on your deck. So there’s lots of options on the flooring section."