Gulf Salt & Sticky Mold
Clearwater sits on the Gulf. The air is salty. Salt pulls moisture. It sticks to granite headstones and sucks humidity from the air. The stone stays damp inside. This constant wetness feeds Gloeocapsa magma (black algae).
You see a thick, black skin covering the stone. It traps heat. It ruins the polish.
Searching for headstone cleaning services near me often points to pressure washing. That destroys salty stone. Pressure drives salt crystals deeper. Bleach just whitens the surface. We use industrial grave site cleaning services. We use a desalination poultice. It draws salt out of the pores. It kills mold roots chemically. The stone dries out. It stays clean.
Sugar Sand Washout
Pinellas County soil is fine "sugar sand." It flows like liquid when wet. Tropical storms dump inches of rain fast. Water rushes under the monument base. It scours the sand away.
The foundation loses support. The monument tilts. Dumping topsoil fails. The next storm washes it away. For lasting tombstone repair and restoration, we stabilize the sub-soil. We dig out the loose sand. We install angular gravel. The rocks lock together. They create a friction pile. It holds the weight, even in liquid mud.
Bronze Disease (Green Corrosion)
Salt air eats bronze markers. Wind blasts the factory clear coat with sand. The seal breaks. Salt hits the raw copper. You get green, chalky rot. This is "Bronze Disease."
It pits the metal lettering. We use strict cleaning bronze cemetery markers protocols. We strip the dead lacquer. We neutralize the green corrosion. Then we reseal it with marine-grade clear coat. This blocks the salt.
Salt Spalling (Pop-outs)
Salt water soaks into stone pores. The sun dries it. The water leaves. The salt stays. It forms crystals inside the granite.
These crystals grow. They push against the rock from the inside. The face of the stone pops off (spalling). We use professional cleaning stone gravestones chemistry to stop this. We apply a solution to dissolve internal salts. We flush them out before they shatter the face.