How hard is the water in Franklin County, FL?

2.4 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Franklin County, FL is 41 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 2.4 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 306 samples at 16 sites between 1993 and 2023, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 0.6 and 2.9 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

You can skip the softener. At 2.4 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Franklin 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 0.2 to 24.7 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Franklin County was 3.6 mg/L and the hardest 423 mg/L, a 118-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 2.9 gpg and the bottom quarter below 0.6 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.

Franklin County against the rest of Florida

Among the 67 Florida counties with data, Franklin County is number 55 of 67 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 19% of counties.

Softest in Florida: Washington County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Sarasota County at 32.2 gpg. Closest to Franklin County: Bradford County (2.2), Gadsden County (2.1), Gulf County (3).