How hard is the water in Kendall County, IL?
21.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Kendall County, IL is 374 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 21.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 107 samples at 12 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 18.5 and 22.7 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 21.8 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 16.1 to 26.3 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Kendall County was 275 mg/L and the hardest 450 mg/L, a 2-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 22.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 18.5 gpg.
Wells 18.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 22.3 gpg
3 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 320 mg/L. 104 surface samples from 9 sites put it at 382 mg/L. In Kendall County the rivers and lakes come out 3.6 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 477 lb of salt a year (12 bags of 40 lb, about $86), 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 $186 a year.
Sizing at 21.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,308 | 24,000 | 159 lb |
| 2 | 2,616 | 24,000 | 318 lb |
| 4 | 5,232 | 40,000 | 637 lb |
| 6 | 7,848 | 64,000 | 955 lb |
Kendall County against the rest of Illinois
Among the 102 Illinois counties with data, Kendall County is number 17 of 102 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 88% of counties.
Softest in Illinois: Pope County at 4.3 gpg. Hardest: Cook County at 34.8 gpg. Closest to Kendall County: Stark County (21.9), Logan County (21.7), Stephenson County (21.6).