Sprinkler Calcium Scale
Orem water is hard. The city sprinklers soak the stones every night. The water dries fast. The calcium doesn't. It bonds to the stone face immediately.
Year after year, that white crust gets thicker. It fills the engraved letters until they disappear. It looks like hard concrete. Scrubbing won't move it. Wire brushes just scratch the polish. We use a specialized acidic cleaner. It eats into the hard water scale chemically. We rinse it away, and the stone looks dark and clear again.
Mower Tire Tracks
Orem City Cemetery has thousands of flat markers. The mowers run fast. They drive right over the stones.
Hot rubber tires leave black skid marks across the face of the marker. That rubber melts right into the stone texture. Scraping it is a bad idea; you will scratch the polish. We apply a solvent instead. It turns the rubber back into goo. We wipe it off. Then we cut the grass back from the edge. This gives the mower tires a dirt track to run on so they don't hit the stone.
Orchard Sap and Pollen
This area used to be all fruit orchards. Old trees still drip sap and pollen everywhere.
Sap hits the stone and bakes in the sun. It turns into hard black spots. Dust sticks to it. It looks terrible. We use a detailer's solvent for cleaning stone gravestones. It breaks down the sticky resin. We gently pick it off without using razor blades. Metal blades scratch the stone, so we work by hand.
Sinking in Farm Soil
The soil here is soft. It was farmland for a long time. Heavy monuments settle and sink.
Flat markers sink until the grass grows over them. We don't just lift them up and shove dirt underneath. Loose dirt settles right back down. We dig the marker out completely. We pack the hole with crushed angular gravel. That creates a solid bed that won't move when it gets wet. The stone stays level because it's sitting on rock, not mud.
Moss in the Shade
The older sections of the cemetery have big shade trees. The sun doesn't hit the stones enough to dry them out.
Green moss and black mold take over. They eat into the stone surface. People searching for headstone cleaning services near me often try bleach. Bleach is bad news; it leaves salts behind that damage the rock later. We use a safe biocide. It kills the roots of the moss. The growth dies and falls off naturally with a light rinse.
Fertilizer Damage
Cemetery crews use heavy fertilizer on these lawns. The pellets land on the granite bases and sit there.
When the sprinklers run, that fertilizer melts. It soaks into the rock pores. It expands inside the stone and pops chips off the face. We pull these salts out with a chemical poultice. Then we treat the stone with a sealer. This keeps the water and the chemicals out of the pores so the stone stops flaking.
Service Costs in Orem
Prices depend on what we find. Removing a tire mark is simple. Leveling a sunken marker takes digging. Here is the breakdown:
- Calcium Removal: Acidic treatment for heavy hard water scaling.
- Rubber Removal: Dissolving mower tire marks and edging the grass.
- Marker Raising: Excavating sunken flat markers and installing a gravel base.
- Sap Cleaning: Chemical removal of tree resin and orchard pollen.
We go to the grave. We check the depth of the sinking. We look at the mineral buildup. Then we give you a price.


