My husband and I are setting out to refinish hardwood floors for the third time. (3rd house). We have done it in the past with fair results, could be better, could be worse. I really want to get it right this time. I've been reading the boards and I see Bona products mentioned a lot. The only Bona products I've seen in my town are for floor cleaning, who carries their poly? We have 2 small children and are currently living in the house so we really want to use water based poly to cut down on fumes. I am trying to decide between Minwax Oil Modified Water Based Poly and Varathane Floor Finish. Any thoughts?
Do we really need to sand between each coat of poly? Any words of caution about renting a sander with 3 or 4 orbiting pads? (we used a "pad" sander in the past but have read good things about the other kind)

Please HELP! I would really appreciate some advice!

are you truing to recoat or completely strip and refinish the floors?

Home Depot has a commercial waterbase finish for homeowners available,

but commercial I mean commercially distributed. their real products have to be bought at flooring distributors.

water/oil; emulsion based finishes are available in professional form from professional manufacturers...
short of stain Minwax really isn't good for much else

They used to sell Varathane water-based floor finish at my local distributor, and my business partner and I used it for many years. It's a good finish, in my opinion, and held up well when I'd come back to recoat the jobs after five to ten years.

As far as sanders go, I've got no current experience with the rental market. It's improved over what was available for rent 20 years ago. I see that they're renting Hummel-style belt sanders, and they have levers for raising and lowering the drum, not lift-and-drop sanders like the old Clarke DU-8s. My opinion would be to go with a three-headed orbital sander over a pad sander, but that's just opinion. Anyone here actually used one?