The Alameda Diesel Grease
The Alameda Corridor runs trains and trucks 24/7. The air is full of diesel particulate. This isn't dust. It is oily soot. It settles on the stone. The sun bakes it into a hard, black skin.
Water slides off because oil repels rain. It builds up layer by layer. If you touch it, it feels tacky. It leaves a black smear on your hand.
If you are searching for headstone cleaning services near me because the marker is black and sticky, that is diesel grease. Standard soap won't cut it. Tending uses industrial grave site cleaning services with solvent degreasers. We chemically strip the oil to reach the stone without scrubbing the polish off.
The Wetland Sinkhole
Compton sits on the old LA River floodplain. The soil is soft silt and clay. It has poor load-bearing capacity. Heavy granite compresses the dirt. We see markers drop three inches straight down.
Grass grows over them. They disappear. If you need tombstone repair and restoration, dumping dirt into the hole fails. The mud swallows it. We excavate. We install a wide-footprint gravel pad. This distributes the weight and keeps the marker floating on top of the soft ground.
Concrete Salt Rot
The water table here is salty. Porous concrete sucks this water up like a wick. The water evaporates, but salt crystals stay inside the concrete matrix.
These crystals grow. They exert internal pressure that exceeds the strength of concrete. The border cracks and crumbles from the inside out. We call this "salt rot." We stabilize the base to prevent the headstone from tipping over.
Irrigation Scale
Sprinklers hit the hot granite. The water boils off immediately. The minerals stay behind. They bake onto the surface like white cement.
It creates a cloudy haze. You cannot scrape this off without damaging the stone. We use specialized chemicals in our cleaning stone gravestones protocols. We apply an industrial descaler that melts the mineral bond safely. We turn the hard crust into a soft paste and rinse it away.