How hard is the water in Lamoille County, VT?

1.5 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Lamoille County, VT is 25 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 1.5 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 627 samples at 123 sites between 1996 and 2025, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 0.8 and 3 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

You can skip the softener. At 1.5 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Lamoille County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

From 0.2 to 20.9 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Lamoille County was 4 mg/L and the hardest 358 mg/L, a 90-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 0.8 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.

Lamoille County against the rest of Vermont

Among the 14 Vermont counties with data, Lamoille County is number 13 of 14 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 12% of counties.

Softest in Vermont: Essex County at 1 gpg. Hardest: Orange County at 7.7 gpg. Closest to Lamoille County: Bennington County (1.9), Essex County (1), Grand Isle County (3.5).