How hard is the water in Barton County, KS?
22.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Barton County, KS is 390 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 22.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 394 samples at 11 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 18.8 and 27.3 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 22.8 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 8.8 to 46.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Barton County was 150 mg/L and the hardest 790 mg/L, a 5-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 27.3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 18.8 gpg.
Wells 19 gpg, rivers and lakes 23.2 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 325 mg/L. 393 surface samples from 10 sites put it at 397.5 mg/L. In Barton County the rivers and lakes come out 4.2 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. A utility here that draws from the aquifer can deliver noticeably different water from a private well next door.
What a softener would cost to run
For a household of 3, a 32,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 498 lb of salt a year (13 bags of 40 lb, about $90), 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 $190 a year.
Sizing at 22.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,368 | 24,000 | 166 lb |
| 2 | 2,736 | 24,000 | 333 lb |
| 4 | 5,472 | 40,000 | 666 lb |
| 6 | 8,208 | 64,000 | 999 lb |
Barton County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Barton County is number 26 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 89% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Barton County: Jewell County (22.6), Decatur County (22.5), Finney County (22.1).