Cleaning Up the Canal Water "Sludge"
West Valley cemeteries rely heavily on secondary canal water. Locals know this water is filthy. It is loaded with farm runoff and silt. When the sprinklers hit the headstones in the summer heat, that dirty water cooks right onto the granite.
It bakes into a red crust that looks exactly like rust. It’s just mud, but it’s stubborn. Elbow grease won't touch it. It fills in the dates and names until you can't read them. We don't scrape it because that ruins the polish. We use a specialized mud-breaking cleaner. It softens that hard crust so we can rinse it away. It reveals the stone underneath without leaving a single scratch.
Salty Soil Eating Foundations
The ground in Granger and Hunter is full of salt. You see it as a white powder on the dirt. That salt is a killer for concrete foundations. It wicks up from the ground into the porous cement.
Over time, the salt makes the concrete crumble and flake apart. When the foundation fails, the heavy monument starts to tip over. We see this all the time. We dig out the rotten concrete and the salty clay around it. We pack the hole with clean, angular gravel before we pour new concrete. This gravel barrier stops the salt from touching the new foundation. It keeps the stone standing straight for good.
Raising Buried Flat Markers
The grass grows fast and sideways here. It creeps over the edges of flat markers in just a few weeks. Before you know it, you lose two or three inches of the stone.
When the marker gets hidden, the lawnmowers run right over it. The blades hit the stone edges and chip them. The tires leave black rubber burn marks across the name. We cut a clean, deep edge back to the stone's border. If the marker has sunk into the soft clay, we pry it up. We don't just shove dirt under it. We pack a solid base of gravel underneath so it sits level with the grass and doesn't sink back down.
Tailings Dust and Grit
The wind blows hard from the lake and the tailings piles. It carries a fine, gritty dust that is sharp like sandpaper.
This dust packs tight into the engraved lettering. When it rains, it turns into a cement-like paste that hardens inside the letters. If you look for headstone cleaning services near me, you'll find guys who want to blast this out with a pressure washer. That is a bad move. High pressure rips the paint right out of the grooves. We use soft detail brushes and picks. We clean the dirt out gently by hand to save the paint.
Internal Iron Rust (Orange Spots)
Some of the granite used here has natural iron deposits inside it. The constant wetting from the canals makes that iron rust from the inside out.
Orange spots start showing up on the granite. You can't scrub them off. That stain is coming from inside the stone, not sitting on top. We apply a chemical paste that acts like a magnet. It sits on the spot for a day or two and pulls the rust particles out of the stone pores. Then we seal it to keep the water out.
Service Costs in West Valley
Every job is different. A quick clean on a flat marker isn't the same as jacking up a sinking monument. We price based on the work needed:
- Standard Cleaning: We remove the canal mud, the bird mess, and the grass clippings.
- Deep Scale Removal: We treat the heavy hard water lines and that baked-on red sludge.
- Marker Raise & Level: We dig up sunken flat stones and build a new gravel bed.
- Foundation Repair: We fix the concrete borders eaten by the salty soil.
We don't give you a guess over the phone. We go to the grave. We check the concrete. We check the level. Then we give you a price that doesn't change.
