We at iCork Floor LLC, carry our own house brand of cork flooring called Forna. Our manufacturer produces dozens of lines of flooring, but the Forna Brand Name is exclusive to Cancork Floor Inc.and iCork Floor LLC. These floors exceed all European and Japanese testing for off gassing. We believe we can go toe-to-toe with any famous brand and win. Be aware that there are some famous brand products that have used solvent based or UV Cured polyurethanes or even polyacrylic finishes. These finishes are often a little bit smellier (off gasses) than the cork products produced using water based polyurethane and water based adhesives.
Our off gassing tests, performed by the ECO Institut in Cologne Germany, demonstrate intensely low levels of off-gassing. The ECO Institute is world renowned for having the toughest standards in Europe; possibly the world. They dont just do one testing. As a norm, they conduct testing on multiple samples multiple times. If even one sample fails, then the whole line is considered as failed. Our Forna products have never failed. The standards put forth by the ECO Institute measure quantities in the microgram per Litre cubed! Many Floor finishing products rate their Low VOC products in the milligram per Cubic meter which is over 100 times greater than the Loba Supra Satin WS 2K which we use to finish our floors with. The Loba is considered food grade material. You could seal a wooden chopping block in it and be confident that the finish, if ingested, does not pose a health threat.
CARB testing ranks our floors as Formaldehyde Free. You can view our test results at: (the list of links is found on the left hand side, in the pink category bar under Product Information). There are four regulating bodies that have inspected our products: CE, CARB, ECO Institute, and SGS these represent the three (3) continents which our manufacturer sells cork flooring products to.
If you wish to view some samples, we would be more than happy to send some to you free of charge.
Cork has a lot of properties, which make it the material of choice amongst home owners as well as interior decorators and property developers. Of all of its beneficial properties, the one most talked about is that it is environmentally friendly. Cork is derived from the bark of the cork oak tree. The bark is carefully harvested from the tree by skilled workers without injuring or harming the tree in any way. After the bark has been stripped off, the tree is left alone to regenerate and regrow its bark. The next harvesting can be done only after nine years and the process is then repeated. The average lifespan of a cork oak tree is about two hundred and fifty years to three hundred years, which means several bark harvests can be done from one tree itself, making this an excellent sustainable resource.