An unemployed Tauranga man's efforts to clean headstones for free at a city cemetery are appreciated, but cannot continue due to the delicacy of the materials, say city council.

Kelly Mclean was cleaning the headstones at the Presbyterian Cemetery on 18th Avenue earlier this week when he was told to stop by cemetery officials.

Cemetery Operations Assistant Andrew Graham points out the headstone that was being cleaned when the self-appointed waterblaster was stopped. Photo Bruce Barnard

Tauranga City Council cemetery operations supervisor Bill Keenan says Kelly spent Monday and Tuesday morning water blasting at the cemetery.

About 12 headstones were cleaned by this stage with a 'little bit” of damage made.

Bill says Kelly was confused about what he had done wrong when approached by staff, and it was explained that there are rules around maintaining these types of historic monuments.

'His intentions were fine, but memorials are private property and like I said to Kelly, you don't go past a house that's a bit dirty and decide to go in there and waterblast it,” says Bill.

'He was doing the old historical memorials that are made of sandstone and the lettering is made of lead, which they no longer use and waterblasters are a no, no.

'We have got rules here and one of the rules is that if people want to do their own work on their own memorial that's fine. But we can't just have a member of the public going in there with a high pressure waterblaster on our old historical memorial, or anyone's memorial.”

He says Wet and Forget mould spray is the preferred treatment with the weather taking care of the cleaning process.

Tauranga City Council communications manager Frank Begley says the Tauranga Historical Society was given $5000 by council to undertake conservation work in the historic cemeteries.

'For the past two years THS have been spraying the headstones with Wet and Forget, which is the recommended solution by the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand,” says Frank.

'The headstones have improved dramatically over this time period.”

When questioned whether Kelly could be employed by council on a part time basis and be taught the correct cleaning techniques, Frank says it is a volunteer-based job run through Tauranga Historical Society.

But he is happy to talk to Kelly about ways he could volunteer his services to the community.