How hard is the water in Cherokee County, KS?
12.3 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Cherokee County, KS is 211 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 12.3 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 10 samples at 10 sites between 1990 and 2016, 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 10.5 and 13.9 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 12.3 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 7.9 to 22.8 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Cherokee County was 135 mg/L and the hardest 391 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 13.9 gpg and the bottom quarter below 10.5 gpg.
Wells 12.3 gpg, rivers and lakes 29.4 gpg
10 groundwater samples from 10 wells put the median at 210.5 mg/L. 1,171 surface samples from 56 sites put it at 502.5 mg/L. In Cherokee County the rivers and lakes come out 17.1 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 269 lb of salt a year (7 bags of 40 lb, about $48), 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 $148 a year.
Sizing at 12.3 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 738 | 24,000 | 90 lb |
| 2 | 1,476 | 24,000 | 180 lb |
| 4 | 2,952 | 24,000 | 359 lb |
| 6 | 4,428 | 32,000 | 539 lb |
Cherokee County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Cherokee County is number 78 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 60% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Cherokee County: Cheyenne County (12.3), Harvey County (12.4), Leavenworth County (12.6).