How hard is the water in Crenshaw County, AL?

1.9 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Crenshaw County, AL is 32 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 1.9 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 88 samples at 9 sites between 1991 and 2024, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 1.3 and 2.5 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: medium (how it is measured).

What to do next

You can skip the softener. At 1.9 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Crenshaw County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

From 1.0 to 2.9 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Crenshaw County was 16.4 mg/L and the hardest 49.7 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 2.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 1.3 gpg.

Wells 1.3 gpg, rivers and lakes 2.1 gpg

1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 21.4 mg/L. 87 surface samples from 8 sites put it at 35.6 mg/L. In Crenshaw County the rivers and lakes come out 0.8 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. The two sources are close, so the county figure should hold whichever one your tap is on.

Crenshaw County against the rest of Alabama

Among the 67 Alabama counties with data, Crenshaw County is number 34 of 67 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 15% of counties.

Softest in Alabama: Washington County at 0.2 gpg. Hardest: Walker County at 13.1 gpg. Closest to Crenshaw County: Monroe County (1.8), Barbour County (1.7), Bullock County (2.2).