How hard is the water in Finney County, KS?
22.1 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Finney County, KS is 379 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 22.1 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 16 samples at 12 sites between 1990 and 2021, 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 12.6 and 27.5 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 22.1 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 8.8 to 123.0 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Finney County was 151 mg/L and the hardest 2,105 mg/L, a 14-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 27.5 gpg and the bottom quarter below 12.6 gpg.
Wells 22.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 49.8 gpg
16 groundwater samples from 12 wells put the median at 378.5 mg/L. 54 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 852.5 mg/L. In Finney County the rivers and lakes come out 27.7 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 32,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 483 lb of salt a year (13 bags of 40 lb, about $87), 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 $187 a year.
Sizing at 22.1 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,326 | 24,000 | 161 lb |
| 2 | 2,652 | 24,000 | 323 lb |
| 4 | 5,304 | 40,000 | 645 lb |
| 6 | 7,956 | 64,000 | 968 lb |
Finney County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Finney County is number 29 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 88% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Finney County: Rice County (22), Decatur County (22.5), Jackson County (21.6).