How hard is the water in Kearney County, NE?
17.4 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Kearney County, NE is 298 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 17.4 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 8 samples at 6 sites between 1992 and 2015, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 12.8 and 22.4 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: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 17.4 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 85.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Kearney County was 164 mg/L and the hardest 1,470 mg/L, a 9-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 22.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 12.8 gpg.
Wells 17.4 gpg, rivers and lakes 27.3 gpg
8 groundwater samples from 6 wells put the median at 298 mg/L. 8 surface samples from 1 sites put it at 466.5 mg/L. In Kearney County the rivers and lakes come out 9.9 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 380 lb of salt a year (10 bags of 40 lb, about $68), 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 $168 a year.
Sizing at 17.4 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,044 | 24,000 | 127 lb |
| 2 | 2,088 | 24,000 | 254 lb |
| 4 | 4,176 | 32,000 | 508 lb |
| 6 | 6,264 | 48,000 | 762 lb |
Kearney County against the rest of Nebraska
Among the 89 Nebraska counties with data, Kearney County is number 24 of 89 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 77% of counties.
Softest in Nebraska: Blaine County at 2.1 gpg. Hardest: Cedar County at 36.5 gpg. Closest to Kearney County: Hall County (17.4), Nuckolls County (17.5), Howard County (17.1).