How hard is the water in Fillmore County, NE?

16 grains per gallon

A softener will pay its way here.

The median hardness measured in Fillmore County, NE is 274 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 14 samples at 10 sites between 1992 and 2015, 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 13.7 and 24.5 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

At 16 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 9.6 to 28.6 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Fillmore County was 165 mg/L and the hardest 489.5 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 24.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.7 gpg.

What a softener would cost to run

For a household of 3, a 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 350 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $63), 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 $163 a year.

Sizing at 16 gpg

Fillmore County against the rest of Nebraska

Among the 89 Nebraska counties with data, Fillmore County is number 37 of 89 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 72% of counties.

Softest in Nebraska: Blaine County at 2.1 gpg. Hardest: Cedar County at 36.5 gpg. Closest to Fillmore County: Polk County (16.1), York County (16.2), Adams County (15.7).