How hard is the water in Cass County, TX?
4.5 grains per gallon
Optional: a softener helps, but plenty of homes skip it.
The median hardness measured in Cass County, TX is 78 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 4.5 gpg. That is moderately hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 172 samples at 4 sites between 1992 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 3.3 and 4.9 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 4.5 gpg this is your call. Look for white film on glasses and crust on the shower head: if you see little of either, you can live without one. If you do want one, a 24,000-grain unit is enough, so ask for that size rather than a bigger one. Because Cass County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.
More on when a softener is not worth it.
From 0.5 to 5.2 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Cass County was 8.7 mg/L and the hardest 88.6 mg/L, a 10-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 4.9 gpg and the bottom quarter below 3.3 gpg.
Wells 0.5 gpg, rivers and lakes 4.8 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 8.7 mg/L. 171 surface samples from 3 sites put it at 82.8 mg/L. In Cass County the rivers and lakes come out 4.3 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 99 lb of salt a year (3 bags of 40 lb, about $18), 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 $118 a year.
Sizing at 4.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 270 | 24,000 | 33 lb |
| 2 | 540 | 24,000 | 66 lb |
| 4 | 1,080 | 24,000 | 131 lb |
| 6 | 1,620 | 24,000 | 197 lb |
Cass County against the rest of Texas
Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Cass County is number 181 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 29% of counties.
Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Cass County: Hunt County (4.5), Limestone County (4.5), Delta County (4.9).