Grave Cleaning & Headstone Restoration in Elizabeth

Degreasing Refinery Soot and Lifting Sunken Markers in Elizabeth

Elizabeth has heavy industry. You can see the smokestacks and the planes from the cemeteries. The air is dirty. It drops salt and oily soot on the stones every day. In Evergreen and Mount Olivet, the monuments are covered in a sticky black film.

The ground is also a problem. It used to be marsh. It is still wet. Heavy granite monuments sink into the soft earth. Families searching for headstone cleaning services near me hire us to cut through that refinery grease and to lift sunken markers back to the surface.

Sticky Refinery "Fallout"

The black grime on Elizabeth headstones is different. It is oily. It comes from the jet fuel and the refinery smoke. It smears like grease if you touch it. Over time, it gets hard and sticks to the granite.

A garden hose does nothing. We use a heavy degreaser. We coat the stone and let the chemical eat the oil. Then we scrub. We usually have to do this a few times to get all the black gunk out of the stone pores. We keep going until the stone is clean.

Sinking in Marshy Soil

The soil here is wet. It shifts. Heavy stones push the mud out of the way and sink. We see markers in Rosedale that are tipped way over. Flat stones just disappear under the grass.

We dig the stone out. We don't put it back on the mud. We build a new base with angular gravel. We tamp it down until it is hard. The gravel lets water drain through so the ground doesn't turn to soup. The stone sits on the rock pad and stays level.

Bronze "Green Spot" Corrosion

The air here destroys bronze. The salt and sulfur attack the metal. The plaques turn bright green. That green powder is the metal eating itself.

We strip off the old coating. We scrub the corrosion down to bare bronze. We polish it. Then we use a torch to heat the metal and melt wax into the pores. The wax seals the bronze so the salt air can't touch it.

Acid Rain on Limestone

Acid rain is bad here. It dissolves the binder in the old limestone markers. The stone turns sandy. You can rub the letters off with your finger.

We can't bring the stone back. We just stop it from getting worse. We clean the acid off. Then we soak the stone in a hardener. It glues the sand grains together so the stone stops falling apart.

Service Costs in Elizabeth

That refinery soot is hard to clean. We use expensive degreasers. Fixing sunken stones means hauling heavy gravel by hand. I need to look at the job to give you a solid price.