The floor in my condo is buckling near the stove (no external vent which is why I mention the area). This is an '04 construction mid-rise (16 floors) building in San Francisco. Building structure is concrete. It’s not a severe buckle, but I can feel it when I walk over the area.
There is quarter round at baseboards and under cabinets so I can't see if expansion joints were done properly.
Flooring is ~4" wide washed oak similar to picture.
What could be the cause of this and what are the steps to fix the issue?
There are probably to reasons for the floor to be buckling: Water or expansion. I either case you would have to remove the affected area either to dry it out or make mor expansion joint respectively.
If it is for expansion, it should be relatively easy since when you remove the first few panks, the floor would probably go back to its position.
4 inch plank suggest that this is either engineered hardwood or laminate flooring. i would have to touch it in person to tell you which. Safe to say it is not 3/4" reall wood floors. With that being said, there is specific installtion practices that must be applied with this type of flooring. A) bring the flooring into the area to be installed and allow at LEAST 48 hours for the product to acclimate prior to installation. B) when you install ensure that there is 1/4" gap around all edge of the walls. The gap allows the floor to expand and contract with the temperature swings from Winter to Summer. Water can also impact this type of flooring as well and make it buckle.
What do you do to fix it? You mentioned there is quarter round. This tells me that the cabinets were installed THEN the floor was laid. otherwise the flooring would go all the way under the cabinets and there would not be a need for the quarter round to cover the gap mentioned above. Remove the quarter round, If there is no gap and it seems the installation is to tight…Easy enough… pull that piece of flooring up if you can. (hopefully it is just a floating floor which on concrete it should be) and rip it on a table saw just a bit and pop it back in. This is all easier said than done of course. A Lic/Bonded contractor can help you out no problem and it should be a quick and cheap fix.
