How hard is the water in Comanche County, KS?
16.9 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Comanche County, KS is 290 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.9 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 428 samples at 10 sites between 1990 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 14.5 and 17.5 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: high (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 16.9 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 7.0 to 40.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Comanche County was 120 mg/L and the hardest 700 mg/L, a 6-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 17.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 14.5 gpg.
Wells 7.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 17.5 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 131 mg/L. 427 surface samples from 9 sites put it at 300 mg/L. In Comanche County the rivers and lakes come out 9.8 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 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 370 lb of salt a year (10 bags of 40 lb, about $67), 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 $167 a year.
Sizing at 16.9 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,014 | 24,000 | 123 lb |
| 2 | 2,028 | 24,000 | 247 lb |
| 4 | 4,056 | 32,000 | 493 lb |
| 6 | 6,084 | 48,000 | 740 lb |
Comanche County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Comanche County is number 49 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 76% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Comanche County: Gray County (16.9), Sedgwick County (16.9), Clay County (17.1).