How hard is the water in Lancaster County, VA?
2.3 grains per gallon
You do not need a softener here.
The median hardness measured in Lancaster County, VA is 39 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 2.3 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 109 samples at 15 sites between 1991 and 2006, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 1.2 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 2.3 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Lancaster 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 0.1 to 44.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Lancaster County was 2.4 mg/L and the hardest 768 mg/L, a 320-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 1.2 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.
Wells 0.3 gpg, rivers and lakes 2.7 gpg
6 groundwater samples from 4 wells put the median at 5.9 mg/L. 103 surface samples from 11 sites put it at 46.5 mg/L. In Lancaster County the rivers and lakes come out 2.4 gpg harder. Here the surface water reads harder than the wells, which often points to streams fed by limestone springs or irrigation return flow. The two sources are close, so the county figure should hold whichever one your tap is on.
Lancaster County against the rest of Virginia
Among the 126 Virginia counties with data, Lancaster County is number 65 of 126 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 18% of counties.
Softest in Virginia: Isle of Wight County at 0.4 gpg. Hardest: Clarke County at 20.1 gpg. Closest to Lancaster County: Craig County (2.2), Pulaski County (2.3), Norfolk city (2.3).