How hard is the water in Lincoln County, CO?

18.5 grains per gallon

A softener will pay its way here.

The median hardness measured in Lincoln County, CO is 316 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 18.5 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 34 samples at 19 sites between 1995 and 2018, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 13.7 and 24.2 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 18.5 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 2.2 to 55.8 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Lincoln County was 38 mg/L and the hardest 956 mg/L, a 25-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 24.2 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.7 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.

Wells 5.8 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.5 gpg

1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 98.6 mg/L. 33 surface samples from 18 sites put it at 333 mg/L. In Lincoln County the rivers and lakes come out 13.7 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 403 lb of salt a year (11 bags of 40 lb, about $73), 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 $173 a year.

Sizing at 18.5 gpg

Lincoln County against the rest of Colorado

Among the 63 Colorado counties with data, Lincoln County is number 19 of 63 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 80% of counties.

Softest in Colorado: Larimer County at 0.4 gpg. Hardest: Mesa County at 143.7 gpg. Closest to Lincoln County: Adams County (17.7), San Juan County (16.2), Ouray County (15.9).