Merbau flooring is said to be the most stable of all solids , apart from genuine bhurmese teak but has any one tried it in bathrooms? We have been buying merbau flooring from indonesia and are really pleased with it , but dont have any experince with it in a bathroom, despite a few people saying its fine. The manufactureres also reckon its okay , but factories are great at saying yes before any problems occurr . Any help or knowledge would be welcomed.
The merbau you purchase from Indonesia, are you absolutely sure it is from sustainable sources? Regulations have changed tremendously and you can burn your fingers really bad when it's discovered it comes from illegal deforestation. As for your question, most tropical woods are more stable than "blond" woods (Oak, Maple, Beech etc) but I would never recommend solid boards in bathrooms. Solid wood blocks or strips of 10mm, yes, boards no. Does your Merbau have yellow streaks in it - Rustic grade, less stabler than Prime Merbau. Lapacho (Ipe, Tajibo, Brazilian Walnut) and Kambala have the same if not better stability than Merbau. Kambala (Iroko) was used in the olden days in harbours, to moor boats on. Now that's stable ;-)
nice work... Much appreciated. Its a 75mm but T&G finger joint . All sustainable and treble checked into. But cheers for the insight. I had my doubts too. Good to hear it confirmed by someone who knows much more about exotics than me. We do very little in them so my experince is limited..
The reason we know (a bit more) about tropicals is because one of our main suppliers/manufacturers has its own FSC certified forest (30,000 hectare) in Bolivia ;-) And they make sure we don't tell "porkies"!
