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Comment by frozenlettuce | Hacker News Reader

Recently I was watching Property Brothers and saw two episodes where both houses had Brazilian Hardwood flooring. The funny thing is that I live in Brazil and it is quite rare to find houses with that type of flooring - the bureaucracy and costs associated make it very expensive - but that might not be the case if the customer is Canadian

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> The funny thing is that I live in Brazil and it is quite rare to find houses with that type of flooring

Does Brazilian Hardwood flooring actually mean the type of flooring Brazilians have or just simply that the hardwood being used as flooring is from Brazil?

It refers to it being from Brazil. Wood is not a popular building material here.

I would argue there is zero point in using real hardwood on floors these days given vinyl planks are way cheaper, way more durable, and look nearly indistinguishable from real thing.

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.

And you feel it, barefoot, touching it, it feels more natural.

Hardwood floors cleans better too, more hygienic. Hard to put into words.

Hardwood is always covered in a plastic finish. Yes it feels different, but it is still plastic.

Is it? Are your referring to the varnish that's applied after?

I don't know where you got this from, but I can assure you that's not correct.

They're talking about polyurethane. It does have a plasticy feel too it.

Polyurethane is a type of plastic, and is the most common wood finish for floors.

But most common != always, as you claimed.

Okay,i'll stand corrected there

That'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,_buffi...

Polyurethane 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

Hardwax 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.

I'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-...

What I was looking at was a different manufacturer’s product which talks about how they use vegetable oil which seems intriguing. I’m going to use the espresso wax / stain and see how it turns out with different numbers of coats https://www.interbuild.shop/route/product/product?product_id...

The vegetable oil stood out to me too. That Bob Flexner book emphasizes that oils other than tung and BLO don't cure but instead go rancid which is why they're not used. (Which is also why BLO is boiled because straight linseed oil doesn't cure) I wonder what that process of heating the vegetable oil with the wax does that just heating vegetable oil alone doesn't?

As a side note, I like the low VOC aspect. I've used pure tung oil from Woodcraft before and it doesn't have a strong smell but it give me the absolute worst headache I've ever had. Worse than any exposure to a varnish or paste wax or something I know has VOCs in it.

Good luck with that product, it looks very interesting!

Don’t wear outdoor shoes inside.

We asians figured this out generations ago.

based and culture-vs.-race-pilled.

Are there cultures where people actually wear shoes throughout their homes?

Taking your shoes off is absolutely not a uniquely asian thing.

> 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.

I always assumed that was just a television thing.

Depends 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.

Back home, not only do we not wear shoes in the house, we wash our feet anytime we enter after leaving the house.

We 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/

2. https://imgur.com/a/9QI5bC2

Does this page ever actually load?

LOL - it did for me. It's also here, though it looks like it's 14mm now.

https://www.floorcity.com/collections/calypso-laminate-floor...

That one works, thanks!

Laminates 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.

I think you're confusing terminology here. Laminate is generally the cheapest option with some sort of plastic over some sort of MDF type material. Definitely no option to refinish.

You're describing engineered hardwood, which ironically often cost more than regular hardwood.

I think you're right laminates probably cannot be refinished. But they are definitely much more expensive/premium than vinyl. I think we paid ~$3.50/square foot just in material cost. I think it's a kind of pressed fiberboard on top of a plastic core and a rubber'ish bottom.

There are expensive and cheap versions of both varieties.

Vinyl luxury plank can be very nice, durable, flexible, thin but with backing to make it quiet and gives it a good feel to walk on, waterproof etc.

I installed much myself and choose based on quality not price and went with VLP for our needs. I think it really just comes down to where you are installing and its characteristics and what materials you have around you.

Also laminates can’t be refinished, nor vinyl. There are some interesting bamboo options out there but frankly VLP these days doesn’t gas off tons of toxic fumes for years, lasts long enough, and is cheap and easy to install and looks real enough these days you’d have to really study it to notice a pattern that unless you really need real it’s good nuff.

I'm curious -- are there laminates that wear naturally? Looking at the photos in your second link, I think the laminates would look more natural and less overtly plastic if they did show a little wear similar to the oak.

Living with the laminates, I wouldn't say they look overtly plastic. Hardwoods are definitely shiny too. You can see a very similar grain in the second photo with the oak. You're right that some wear might change the finish, but I would definitely not trade for the wear you see on the oak. My wife's parents have high-end oak hardwoods and full size dogs. Their flooring is a mess.

The biggest problem with laminate flooring is not the wear, it's that if they get wet the compressed fiberboard absorbs the water and swells, and the surface warps, and the only repair is to replace. Some laminates are 100% waterproof for locations like bathrooms but many are not.

Something like a spilled glass of water or puddle from wet shoes, if not noticed immediately and wiped up, can permanently ruin the floor.

Yes, we were a little apprehensive about putting them in our three bathrooms. You pay more for better moisture resistance. Eight years later and ours still look like new, notwithstanding our kids getting out of showers multiple times a day. At least the flooring we got seem to handle water very well.

> 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.

My house has original oak floors installed 85 years ago and there is still enough material left for 2-3 sandings.

Buy you have ceramic alternatives. Wood looking ad well.Good in combination with floor heating and probably last for a 1000 years.

Ceramic 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.

Yes 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.

Like 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.

> 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.

Having 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.

I'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.

They 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.

You'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...

We went with a mid-grade LVP in the basement (ease of install, cost, and water-resistance). It's fine in that use case, but it has some drawbacks over wood. The primary one I've noticed is the damage pattern (from moving furniture, etc) isn't good - wood patinas better, where LVP just gets gouges. Maybe there are more expensive LVP options that don't do this.

I prefer to use patina to refer to acceptable or even desirable wear, and in that sense, LVP doesn't patina at all, but rather gouges, as you say.

> look nearly indistinguishable

maybe I'm top 1% neurotic about these things but I can tell from Zillow images alone. And definitely by feel of walking on them and the distinct noise they make. There's no comparison.

I seriously doubt they are indistinguishable for most people, but I could be very wrong, especially since so many people go for them.

Most people just don't care or never knew the difference. Like keming, once you notice it, you will likely notice for the rest of your life.

That was physically painful to read, good example

Yes. There is no way the extra costs of real hardwood are worth the supposed benefits, to me. LVP or LVT or whatever vinyl name is just so much cheaper and easier to work with, and as long as the floor is clean and presentable, the only difference I see is wood flooring being more expensive.

Have you ever lived in a house with real wood floors? The difference you feel barefoot is quite noticeable. It may not be worth the cost to you, but it is definitely different.

Sometimes life is better when you just accept that something is different but not necessarily worse.

Natural gas fireplaces aren't real wood-burning, and I can tell, but I just appreciate that they are way cleaner.

Now, furniture is a different story. Wood is much better than the engineered crap. Try lifting a modern piece that looks like wood and maybe has a thin layer of wood (very heavy and easy to damage) and then try lifting something made of real wood (light and strong).

But it's so much worse, we can squabble over particulars the minor day to day benefits of them both but the showstopper is that laminate is just trash waiting to happen. Hardwood floors can last 100+ years easy and can be maintained essentially indefinitely. And even if you don't maintain them they can be restored without too much trouble, there are previously abandoned houses that got flipped and are going for 600k with the original floors.

Hardwood floors, tile roofs, ceramic freestanding bathtubs, and loose stone or brick pathways are never not worth the investment.

I have had no issues with “engineered crap” from IKEA. Even have dresser drawers from nearly 20 years ago currently in use.

Another case where real wood provides no extra utility, to me. My furniture does not get tossed around, it does not need to be “strong”.

What is it about the laminate that makes it better?

> look nearly indistinguishable from real thing.

Have to disagree here. Even at a glance they're totally different.

The worst are floors with a thin layer of hardwood surface (a few mm) over some "engineered" material below making up the rest of the plank.

I'm not sure vinyl is indistinguishable from real hardwood, but I'd take it over a worst-of-both-worlds compromise.

Good engineered hardwood has enough of a top wear layer that allows the same number of refinishes as solid hardwood (due to hitting the tongue and groove), plus you get better humidity performance.

The engineered flooring is generally superior technology:

1. It requires less hardwood (rare) for the veneer, and uses softwood (plentiful) for the plywood base. 2. It can be milled exactly to one thickness. Generally with solid hardwood floors you need to sand after installing to get everything into one plane due to moisture movement in the hardwood warping and twisting it. 3. It can be applied in wider planks. Wide solid hardwood floors tend to cup and contract and leave gaps after installation. The plywood base in engineered planks is cross laminated so that it is more stable and resist moisture changes

There are very reasonable hardwood materials available - it's just better to prefer sourcing them from countries without illegal exploitation issues. Canadian hardwood is pretty affordable and quite durable for flooring - as an alternative.

Personally I don't trust vinyl flooring not to outgas toxic chemicals or produce toxic dust as it wears down.

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