How hard is the water in Graham County, KS?
14 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Graham County, KS is 240 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 14 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 28 samples at 7 sites between 1991 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 12.2 and 19 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 14 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 38.0 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Graham County was 165 mg/L and the hardest 650 mg/L, a 4-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 19 gpg and the bottom quarter below 12.2 gpg.
Wells 11.5 gpg, rivers and lakes 14.9 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 197 mg/L. 27 surface samples from 6 sites put it at 255 mg/L. In Graham County the rivers and lakes come out 3.4 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 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 306 lb of salt a year (8 bags of 40 lb, about $55), 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 $155 a year.
Sizing at 14 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 840 | 24,000 | 102 lb |
| 2 | 1,680 | 24,000 | 204 lb |
| 4 | 3,360 | 24,000 | 409 lb |
| 6 | 5,040 | 40,000 | 613 lb |
Graham County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Graham County is number 61 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 66% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Graham County: Harper County (14), Greenwood County (13.9), Stevens County (14.4).