Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: annie123 on 22/08/2018 06:03:28
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Not sure if this goes in here since cork is a tree- or in another section - but I'd like to know whether there are any disadvantages/advantages of cork for flooring. Also is it plentiful?
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The attraction of cork flooring is that, as a poor conductor of heat, the surface feels warm to walk on barefoot, and it helps to keep a room insulated. Cork boarding is also used in the building trade to clad walls below render / plaster with the same purpose in mind.
The cork material is also soft and spongy, making it nice to walk on.
It has the above properties because it contains a lot of air spaces; these contribute to the poor thermal conductivity (insulating properties) and the compressability that makes it spongy,
I am not sure about the sustainability angle - I hope that the stuff used in buildings is environmental sound... Maybe someone else who knows can comment.
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It's not as cold as tiles when you get up in the morning....
It's not nearly as hard-wearing as tiles or floorboards.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_(material)#Harvesting
Oops... overlap with chris
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It's as sustainable as it is profitable, just like paper - indeed more so: you don't need to plant a new tree when you harvest an old one!
Cork is the outer bark of the cork oak tree or Quercus (oak) suber (cork). This remarkable tree has a bark (suberose parenchyma) which is unique throughout the plant kingdom. The cork bark can be harvested from the tree allowing new bark to grow in its place without killing or damaging the trees.
and when the tree gets too old to grow good quality cork, you can use the wood to make furniture.
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When we put cork tiles down in our (originally stone tiled) kitchen, we discovered that crockery and milk bottles were much less likely to break when dropped.
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It's as sustainable as it is profitable, just like paper - indeed more so: you don't need to plant a new tree when you harvest an old one!
Cork is the outer bark of the cork oak tree or Quercus (oak) suber (cork). This remarkable tree has a bark (suberose parenchyma) which is unique throughout the plant kingdom. The cork bark can be harvested from the tree allowing new bark to grow in its place without killing or damaging the trees.
and when the tree gets too old to grow good quality cork, you can use the wood to make furniture.
So what was all this business about cork being in declining supply in recent years? And is the stuff used for wine bottles different to what we put on the floor and walls of buildings?
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Plastic stoppers are much easier to make, much more consistent, sterile, leakproof, rotproof, cheaper, and easier to extract from the bottle. Fortunately they are being replaced by screwtops with plastic liners which are even better and less polluting.
IIRC a wine cork is made from a single piece of dense, thick old bark, whereas floor tiles are resin- or wax-bonded thin young rubbish that can't be used for wine. A major increase in both wine consumption and flooring just swung the economics towards the latter with a consequent decrease in the availability and increase in the price of wine corks. There is much less waste in extruding a flat sheet than cutting or turning a round bar from a natural product, but the demand and supply of bottle cork haven't quite dried up yet.
Problem with any tree-based product is the 5 - 50 year lead time between demand and supply, plus the occasional devastating disease of any extensive monoculture, so there are occasional shortages and price hikes. Given Einstein's prediction that the next world war will be fought with bows and arrows, now is the time to plant yew trees for your grandchildren.
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The cork wood is quite permeable and has lots of advantages if used as a flooring material. Last summer, when the renovation of the kitchen area was running, the contractors suggested my Dad, to have a hardwood flooring installation from the flooring company SPAMCO, as the material used by them on the hardwood is quite reasonable and also very durable in nature. As we took help from the spam.com for the Floor suggestions, they helped a lot about what type of flooring will suit the floor and have also given many ideas in selecting the Flooring design..