How hard is the water in Crook County, WY?
30.7 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Crook County, WY is 525 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 30.7 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 43 samples at 22 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 19 and 78.8 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 30.7 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 0.8 to 106.6 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Crook County was 14.1 mg/L and the hardest 1,825 mg/L, a 129-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 78.8 gpg and the bottom quarter below 19 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 30.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 49.5 gpg
43 groundwater samples from 22 wells put the median at 525 mg/L. 578 surface samples from 4 sites put it at 848 mg/L. In Crook County the rivers and lakes come out 18.8 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 40,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 670 lb of salt a year (17 bags of 40 lb, about $121), 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 $221 a year.
Sizing at 30.7 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,842 | 24,000 | 224 lb |
| 2 | 3,684 | 32,000 | 448 lb |
| 4 | 7,368 | 64,000 | 896 lb |
| 6 | 11,052 | 80,000 | 1,345 lb |
Crook County against the rest of Wyoming
Among the 23 Wyoming counties with data, Crook County is number 2 of 23 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 95% of counties.
Softest in Wyoming: Park County at 1.4 gpg. Hardest: Natrona County at 124.4 gpg. Closest to Crook County: Big Horn County (26.4), Sheridan County (24.3), Hot Springs County (22.5).