The "Dixie" Red Iron Stain
The soil in St. George is full of iron oxide. It blows around as red dust. When the cemetery sprinklers hit it, that dust turns into a rusty mud that clings to the base of every monument.
That mud sits against the granite and soaks into the pores. It leaves a deep orange ring. You can scrub all day, but that orange stain won't leave. It’s not on the stone; it’s in it. We apply a thick chemical poultice. It sits on the stain for 24 hours and pulls the iron particles out of the rock. We rinse it away, and the natural gray of the granite comes back.
Heat Damage to Mortar Joints
The heat down here is brutal on stone. In July, a black granite marker gets hot enough to burn your hand. The stone expands in that heat and shrinks at night.
Rigid cement can't handle that movement. It cracks and falls out of the joint between the tablet and the base. The stone starts to wobble. We chisel the old, failed mortar out completely. We don't put cement back in. We use a flexible epoxy. This stuff moves. When the stone expands in the 110-degree heat, the epoxy expands with it. It doesn't crack, so the water stays out.
Hard Water Calcium Crust
The irrigation water leaves a heavy white crust on the monuments. In this dry air, the water evaporates instantly, but the calcium stays behind.
This scale builds up until you can't read the dates. Scrapers are too risky; they scratch the mirror polish on the granite. We use a specialized acidic cleaner made for cleaning stone gravestones. It dissolves the calcium bond. We start at sunrise while the stone is still cool. If we wait until noon, the rock gets too hot and cooks the chemical before it cleans anything.
Pioneer Sandstone Peeling
Many of the oldest graves in town are made of local red sandstone. It is soft. The binding fails. You see thin sheets of stone lifting right off the face. It flakes away until the name is gone.
A pressure washer destroys this soft rock. It blasts the inscription right off the surface. We don't scrub these. We saturate them with a stone consolidant. This liquid soaks deep into the sand grains and hardens. It glues the layers back together. It stops the flaking and saves the history without changing how the stone looks.
Sun-Burnt Lettering
The UV rays here kill paint fast. Factory lettering fades out in just a few years. The letters end up looking just like the stone around them.
Families searching for headstone cleaning services near me often think the stone needs to be replaced. Usually, it just needs paint. We clean out the old flaky residue. We repaint the inscription using automotive enamel. It stands up to the intense St. George sun much better than standard masonry paint.
Caliche Hardpan Issues
Digging in St. George means hitting caliche. It’s a layer of soil as hard as concrete. It traps water right under the headstone foundation.
That standing water rots the concrete base. The marker starts to sink or tilt. We have to punch through that caliche layer. We use digging bars to break it up. We install a gravel drain through the hardpan. This lets the water escape so the foundation stays dry and the marker sits level.
Service Costs in St. George
Restoration costs vary. Removing a simple water stain is standard. Stabilizing a peeling sandstone marker takes expensive materials and time. Every job has a different price tag:
- Red Iron Removal: We use a chemical paste to pull deep rust stains out of the pores.
- Joint Repair: We replace cracked cement with flexible, heat-resistant epoxy.
- Sandstone Consolidation: We apply a hardener to stop fragile markers from peeling.
- Re-Lettering: We paint over faded names with enamel that handles the sun.
We assess the stone personally. We check the heat damage. We check the sandstone condition. Then we give you a price.
