How hard is the water in Macon County, MO?

16 grains per gallon

A softener will pay its way here.

The median hardness measured in Macon County, MO is 275 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 62 samples at 13 sites between 2008 and 2026, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 11.7 and 38.7 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 16 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 9.2 to 92.3 gpg

The softest single sample on record in Macon County was 157 mg/L and the hardest 1,580 mg/L, a 10-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 38.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 11.7 gpg.

What a softener would cost to run

For a household of 3, a 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 350 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $63), 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 $163 a year.

Sizing at 16 gpg

Macon County against the rest of Missouri

Among the 110 Missouri counties with data, Macon County is number 14 of 110 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 73% of counties.

Softest in Missouri: Livingston County at 4.1 gpg. Hardest: Reynolds County at 96.7 gpg. Closest to Macon County: St. Clair County (15.7), Cape Girardeau County (16.4), Buchanan County (15.5).