How hard is the water in Grant County, WI?
21 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Grant County, WI is 360 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 21 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 213 samples at 31 sites between 1990 and 2014, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 17.3 and 24 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 21 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 5.6 to 27.5 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Grant County was 95.4 mg/L and the hardest 470 mg/L, a 5-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 24 gpg and the bottom quarter below 17.3 gpg.
Wells 17.6 gpg, rivers and lakes 21.3 gpg
2 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 301 mg/L. 209 surface samples from 28 sites put it at 365 mg/L. In Grant County the rivers and lakes come out 3.7 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 459 lb of salt a year (12 bags of 40 lb, about $83), 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 $183 a year.
Sizing at 21 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,260 | 24,000 | 153 lb |
| 2 | 2,520 | 24,000 | 307 lb |
| 4 | 5,040 | 40,000 | 613 lb |
| 6 | 7,560 | 64,000 | 920 lb |
Grant County against the rest of Wisconsin
Among the 72 Wisconsin counties with data, Grant County is number 10 of 72 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 86% of counties.
Softest in Wisconsin: Vilas County at 1.4 gpg. Hardest: Calumet County at 28.4 gpg. Closest to Grant County: Sheboygan County (20.9), Outagamie County (21.1), Racine County (20.8).