About HardnessCheck
Why this exists
Most "how hard is my water" results are written by companies that sell softeners, and they rarely tell you that you do not need one. HardnessCheck reports what public sampling has actually measured in your county, in grains per gallon, and gives a verdict that is allowed to say no. In 740 of the 3,035 counties covered, it does.
What goes into the number
Every county figure comes from 607,842 hardness results (calcium plus magnesium, reported as calcium carbonate) collected between 1990 and 5005 and published through the USGS/EPA Water Quality Portal. Softener sizing and running costs follow published household water-use and salt-efficiency figures. The full method is in the methodology guide.
What it cannot tell you
A county median is not your tap. Your utility may blend sources, and a private well can read very differently from the one next door. Every page shows the spread, and where that spread crosses a decision line it says so and points you to a $10 test strip.
Who runs this
HardnessCheck is an independently run site. It is not affiliated with USGS, the EPA, the Water Quality Association, any water utility or any softener maker or dealer. If a page ever carries a sponsored link, that is disclosed on the page itself and in the privacy policy.
Written by
Each county page is generated by software from the cited Water Quality Portal data and the published sizing and cost figures. No journalist or editor reviews a page before it publishes. The hardness numbers come from the public sampling record, not from AI; the software only assembles the sentences around them.