How hard is the water in Cheyenne County, CO?
14.7 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Cheyenne County, CO is 252 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 14.7 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 73 samples at 3 sites between 1996 and 2015, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 13.4 and 35.4 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 14.7 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 12.0 to 56.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Cheyenne County was 206 mg/L and the hardest 960 mg/L, a 5-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 35.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.4 gpg.
Wells 12 gpg, rivers and lakes 35.4 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 206 mg/L. 72 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 606 mg/L. In Cheyenne County the rivers and lakes come out 23.4 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 322 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $58), 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 $158 a year.
Sizing at 14.7 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 882 | 24,000 | 107 lb |
| 2 | 1,764 | 24,000 | 215 lb |
| 4 | 3,528 | 32,000 | 429 lb |
| 6 | 5,292 | 40,000 | 644 lb |
Cheyenne County against the rest of Colorado
Among the 63 Colorado counties with data, Cheyenne County is number 25 of 63 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 68% of counties.
Softest in Colorado: Larimer County at 0.4 gpg. Hardest: Mesa County at 143.7 gpg. Closest to Cheyenne County: Boulder County (13.9), Baca County (15.8), Moffat County (15.8).