How hard is the water in Bosque County, TX?
13.3 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Bosque County, TX is 228 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 13.3 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 88 samples at 5 sites between 1997 and 2020, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 11.3 and 14.8 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: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 13.3 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 0.9 to 15.0 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Bosque County was 15.1 mg/L and the hardest 257 mg/L, a 17-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 14.8 gpg and the bottom quarter below 11.3 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 0.9 gpg, rivers and lakes 14 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 15.1 mg/L. 87 surface samples from 4 sites put it at 240.5 mg/L. In Bosque County the rivers and lakes come out 13.1 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 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 291 lb of salt a year (8 bags of 40 lb, about $52), 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 $152 a year.
Sizing at 13.3 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 798 | 24,000 | 97 lb |
| 2 | 1,596 | 24,000 | 194 lb |
| 4 | 3,192 | 24,000 | 388 lb |
| 6 | 4,788 | 40,000 | 583 lb |
Bosque County against the rest of Texas
Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Bosque County is number 107 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 63% of counties.
Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Bosque County: Sherman County (13.3), Frio County (13.4), Falls County (13.5).