How hard is the water in Madison County, TX?

3 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in Madison County, TX is 51 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 3 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 3 samples at 2 sites between 1994 and 2015, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 1.5 and 4.5 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: low (how it is measured).

What to do next

You can skip the softener. At 3 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in Madison County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one. Because Madison County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.

More on when a softener is not worth it.

Wells 0.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 6 gpg

1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 0.9 mg/L. 2 surface samples from 1 sites put it at 102 mg/L. In Madison County the rivers and lakes come out 5.9 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.

Madison County against the rest of Texas

Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Madison County is number 190 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 21% of counties.

Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Madison County: Wood County (2.9), Galveston County (2.8), Smith County (2.7).