How hard is the water in Fulton County, IL?
20.6 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Fulton County, IL is 352 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 20.6 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 419 samples at 19 sites between 1990 and 2017, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 18.6 and 27.3 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 20.6 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 8.0 to 59.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Fulton County was 136.5 mg/L and the hardest 1,012 mg/L, a 7-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 27.3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 18.6 gpg.
Wells 15.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 20.6 gpg
3 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 258.3 mg/L. 416 surface samples from 17 sites put it at 352 mg/L. In Fulton County the rivers and lakes come out 5.5 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 449 lb of salt a year (12 bags of 40 lb, about $81), 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 $181 a year.
Sizing at 20.6 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,236 | 24,000 | 150 lb |
| 2 | 2,472 | 24,000 | 301 lb |
| 4 | 4,944 | 40,000 | 602 lb |
| 6 | 7,416 | 64,000 | 902 lb |
Fulton County against the rest of Illinois
Among the 102 Illinois counties with data, Fulton County is number 26 of 102 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 85% of counties.
Softest in Illinois: Pope County at 4.3 gpg. Hardest: Cook County at 34.8 gpg. Closest to Fulton County: McDonough County (20.6), Jo Daviess County (20.7), Henry County (20.4).