How hard is the water in Houston County, MN?
16.9 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Houston County, MN is 290 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.9 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 178 samples at 15 sites between 1991 and 2024, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 13.4 and 17.4 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 16.9 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 3.0 to 18.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Houston County was 51.5 mg/L and the hardest 310 mg/L, a 6-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 17.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.4 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 11.9 gpg, rivers and lakes 16.9 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 204 mg/L. 177 surface samples from 14 sites put it at 290 mg/L. In Houston County the rivers and lakes come out 5.0 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 370 lb of salt a year (10 bags of 40 lb, about $67), 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 $167 a year.
Sizing at 16.9 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,014 | 24,000 | 123 lb |
| 2 | 2,028 | 24,000 | 247 lb |
| 4 | 4,056 | 32,000 | 493 lb |
| 6 | 6,084 | 48,000 | 740 lb |
Houston County against the rest of Minnesota
Among the 87 Minnesota counties with data, Houston County is number 43 of 87 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 76% of counties.
Softest in Minnesota: Lake County at 1.3 gpg. Hardest: Traverse County at 42.6 gpg. Closest to Houston County: Anoka County (16.9), Carver County (16.6), Pennington County (16.5).