Stone Cleaning

One of the easiest jobs to start in a cemetery project is cleaning of the stones.  Sounds easy, but it is the most time consuming and labor intensive process.  The first step in a cleaning is a good scrubbing with a nylon brush and water.  Always working from the bottom up. A great way to soak the stone with water, is a weed sprayer, clean and never used, except for water. This will get a lot of the dirt removed.  The biological like the lichens are harder to remove, they are stubborn in their survival.  I like a cleaning of Orvus paste in a five gallon bucket of water, Orvus does not give a quick cleaning and some may skip this step. The third step is a solution of one part Ammonia, and four parts water.  One can tell if your solution is too strong by the Ammonia smell.   Between any of these steps it is important to rinse, rinse and rinse some more.  These methods should never be used on Standstone.  These cleaning solutions are for Marble both fine and coarse grained and Indiana Limestone, not the coarse grain limestone with  large pores, which can be identified by flaking and splitting of the stone.