How hard is the water in Barber County, KS?
27.7 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Barber County, KS is 475 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 27.7 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 491 samples at 14 sites between 1990 and 2016, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 17.6 and 40.2 gpg. The whole middle of that range gives the same answer, so a test of your own tap is unlikely to change it. Confidence in the county figure: high (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 27.7 gpg a softener pays its way here. Before you buy, check the quoted unit's grain capacity against the sizing table below, and ask whether it regenerates on demand, which uses less salt than a timer. Call your utility for its own report if you are on city water.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 4.6 to 52.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Barber County was 79 mg/L and the hardest 905 mg/L, an 11-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 40.2 gpg and the bottom quarter below 17.6 gpg.
What a softener would cost to run
For a household of 3, a 40,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 606 lb of salt a year (16 bags of 40 lb, about $109), and roughly 2,346 gallons of regeneration water. Installed, most units run $1,000 to $4,500; spread over 15 years with salt, that is about $209 a year.
Sizing at 27.7 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,662 | 24,000 | 202 lb |
| 2 | 3,324 | 24,000 | 404 lb |
| 4 | 6,648 | 48,000 | 809 lb |
| 6 | 9,972 | 80,000 | 1,213 lb |
Barber County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Barber County is number 17 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 93% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Barber County: Rush County (27.7), Phillips County (27.5), Clark County (28.6).