How hard is the water in Converse County, WY?
11.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Converse County, WY is 203 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 11.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 64 samples at 36 sites between 1990 and 2023, 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 5.5 and 25.1 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: high (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 11.8 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. Because Converse County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 0.2 to 74.8 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Converse County was 4.1 mg/L and the hardest 1,280 mg/L, a 312-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 25.1 gpg and the bottom quarter below 5.5 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 11.8 gpg, rivers and lakes 75.2 gpg
64 groundwater samples from 36 wells put the median at 202.5 mg/L. 179 surface samples from 4 sites put it at 1287.5 mg/L. In Converse County the rivers and lakes come out 63.4 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 258 lb of salt a year (7 bags of 40 lb, about $47), 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 $147 a year.
Sizing at 11.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 708 | 24,000 | 86 lb |
| 2 | 1,416 | 24,000 | 172 lb |
| 4 | 2,832 | 24,000 | 345 lb |
| 6 | 4,248 | 32,000 | 517 lb |
Converse County against the rest of Wyoming
Among the 23 Wyoming counties with data, Converse County is number 13 of 23 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 58% of counties.
Softest in Wyoming: Park County at 1.4 gpg. Hardest: Natrona County at 124.4 gpg. Closest to Converse County: Albany County (11.4), Goshen County (11.4), Carbon County (12.9).