How hard is the water in Brewster County, TX?
24.2 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Brewster County, TX is 414 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 24.2 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 20 samples at 20 sites between 2000 and 2010, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 11.1 and 38.8 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 24.2 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 2.0 to 42.2 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Brewster County was 35 mg/L and the hardest 722 mg/L, a 21-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 38.8 gpg and the bottom quarter below 11.1 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 3.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 25.5 gpg
2 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 63.9 mg/L. 18 surface samples from 18 sites put it at 436.5 mg/L. In Brewster County the rivers and lakes come out 21.8 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 528 lb of salt a year (14 bags of 40 lb, about $95), 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 $195 a year.
Sizing at 24.2 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,452 | 24,000 | 177 lb |
| 2 | 2,904 | 24,000 | 353 lb |
| 4 | 5,808 | 48,000 | 707 lb |
| 6 | 8,712 | 64,000 | 1,060 lb |
Brewster County against the rest of Texas
Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Brewster County is number 43 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 91% of counties.
Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Brewster County: Coleman County (23.8), Crosby County (23.5), Kendall County (24.9).