How hard is the water in Bureau County, IL?
16.3 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Bureau County, IL is 280 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.3 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 24 samples at 7 sites between 1990 and 2013, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 13.6 and 21.5 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 16.3 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 11.7 to 40.0 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Bureau County was 200 mg/L and the hardest 684 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 21.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.6 gpg.
Wells 16.3 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.8 gpg
24 groundwater samples from 7 wells put the median at 279.5 mg/L. 203 surface samples from 14 sites put it at 339.5 mg/L. In Bureau County the rivers and lakes come out 3.5 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 357 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $64), 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 $164 a year.
Sizing at 16.3 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 978 | 24,000 | 119 lb |
| 2 | 1,956 | 24,000 | 238 lb |
| 4 | 3,912 | 32,000 | 476 lb |
| 6 | 5,868 | 48,000 | 714 lb |
Bureau County against the rest of Illinois
Among the 102 Illinois counties with data, Bureau County is number 57 of 102 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 74% of counties.
Softest in Illinois: Pope County at 4.3 gpg. Hardest: Cook County at 34.8 gpg. Closest to Bureau County: Edgar County (16.2), Greene County (16.2), Putnam County (16.5).