Grave Cleaning & Headstone Restoration in Green Bay

Cleaning Paper Mill Soot and Lichen in Green Bay

Green Bay is a mill town. You used to be able to smell the sulfur everywhere. That soot settled on the graveyards. It coated the markers at Woodlawn and Fort Howard with a black layer that won't wash off. It turned the white limestone dark and dingy.

We also deal with the Bay itself. It makes the air heavy and wet. Lichen loves that. In the old sections, you see markers coated in thick orange and yellow crust. Between the black industrial soot and the bright lichen, families searching for headstone cleaning services near me call us to strip away the buildup and find the stone underneath.

Paper Mill Sulfur Stains

The mill smoke was thick for decades. That sulfur reacted with the limestone markers. It created a black shell on the surface. It looks like the stone was burned.

You can't wash this off with soap. It requires a chemical pack called a poultice. We mix up a paste and smear it over the black parts. We cover it and let it work. It slowly draws the sulfur stain out of the rock. When we wash it off, the stone looks white again.

Lichen on the Bay

The damp air makes lichen grow fast here. It digs its roots right into the rough stone. If you try to scrape it off dry, you will pull chunks of the stone off with it.

We have to kill it to get it off safely. We soak the stone with a biological cleaner. The lichen turns color and dies. Once it's dead, it doesn't hold on anymore. We can brush it away with water without hurting the stone.

The "Frozen Tundra" Heave

The cold here is no joke. The frost goes deep. When the clay soil freezes, it pushes up with a lot of power. It tips headstones over or pushes flat markers up until the snowplow hits them.

We fix this by digging out the clay. We swap it for deep crushed gravel. Water flows right through gravel instead of sitting there. Since there is no water trapped underneath to freeze, the stone sits still all winter.

Soft Limestone Decay

A lot of the older monuments here are made of local limestone. It gets soft over time. It can start to "sugar," which means it crumbles like sand if you rub it too hard.

We treat these like glass. No stiff brushes. Never use a power washer. We use a chemical hardener to bind the stone together, then wash it gently so we don't scrub the lettering away.

Service Costs in Green Bay

Applying a chemical poultice to remove mill smoke takes trips back and forth. Digging out a heaved monument in clay takes muscle. I can't guess the price over the phone. We have an online tool. You pick the cemetery, tell us if it's cleaning or leveling, and you see the cost right there.