How hard is the water in Edwards County, KS?
30.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Edwards County, KS is 528 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 30.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 151 samples at 4 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 25.7 and 32.4 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 30.8 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.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 14.5 to 33.3 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Edwards County was 248 mg/L and the hardest 570 mg/L, a 2-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 32.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 25.7 gpg.
Wells 22 gpg, rivers and lakes 32.7 gpg
2 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 376.5 mg/L. 149 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 560 mg/L. In Edwards County the rivers and lakes come out 10.7 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 673 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 30.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,848 | 24,000 | 225 lb |
| 2 | 3,696 | 32,000 | 450 lb |
| 4 | 7,392 | 64,000 | 899 lb |
| 6 | 11,088 | 80,000 | 1,349 lb |
Edwards County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Edwards County is number 10 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 95% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Edwards County: Ellis County (31.3), Dickinson County (30.4), Osborne County (31.4).