Is my deck made out of cedar or redwood?

[Oscar_Lives]

How can I tell? The wood is grey (about 5 years old).

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Can you cut a piece someplace? That would reveal a fresh surface that would help.

[MUADIB®]

use a sanding tool or the like and smell the area sanded. If it smells like cedar,.............well, It's cedar. If it smells like pine, then it's pine...............etc...This will work well with the cedar, but the rest of the woods I am unfamiliar with the scent , so i'd probably be just a fool for stating the above. But cut the cedar and it'll give off a very distinct cedar smell, unless it's just rotten to death.

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MUADIB®

one small step for man,..... One giant leap for attorneys.

[ollie_w_holmes]

If it looks good, it's redwood. Otherwise it is cedar or, worse yet, pressure treated lumber.

I'm assuming the wood has a clear protective coating. If someone put a colored preservative over the wood, all bets are off.

[Sunflower]

Where do you live? Redwood decks are pretty much a West Coast affair. You don't see much cedar in the East either, because of the expense. The most common to everywhere is plain old pressure treated pine. Unless you live in a bucks up community, I'd bet on the pine.

[Gort]

If you can access the underside at all try sanding a small portion of it. The upper surface will remain unmarked, and you should be able to figure out what you have.

[ConcreteFinishing&StuccoGuy]

From your discription, the deck is concrete.

-- Troweller^nospam^@canada.com

[Duane Bozarth]

Not generically true...many decks in TN were redwood (I'd say the majority until about 10 years ago) for almost all new construction. Granted it's now gotten expensive enough to be a custom material, granted.

[calhoun]

If those are the only 2 choices than Cedar ages light gray, redwood ages darker.

[Doug Miller]

If you don't have anything to compare it to, though, it's kinda tough to tell that way.

If you can drill a hole, or cut a bit off, in an inconspicuous place, that should be enough to identify the difference. Even old cedar will have a faint, but still noticeable, cedar smell to it when cut; likewise, pine smells like pine; but redwood doesn't smell like either one.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

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There might also be some stampings on the bottom to identify it.