How hard is the water in McCreary County, KY?

2.6 grains per gallon

You do not need a softener here.

The median hardness measured in McCreary County, KY is 45 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 2.6 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 268 samples at 11 sites between 1990 and 2014, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.

How much it varies here

Half the sites came in between 1.7 and 3.1 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 2.6 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in McCreary 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 0.6 to 10.2 gpg

The softest single sample on record in McCreary County was 10.1 mg/L and the hardest 174 mg/L, a 17-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 3.1 gpg and the bottom quarter below 1.7 gpg.

Wells 1.4 gpg, rivers and lakes 2.6 gpg

8 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 23.7 mg/L. 260 surface samples from 9 sites put it at 45 mg/L. In McCreary County the rivers and lakes come out 1.2 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.

McCreary County against the rest of Kentucky

Among the 104 Kentucky counties with data, McCreary County is number 97 of 104 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 20% of counties.

Softest in Kentucky: Letcher County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Jefferson County at 32.9 gpg. Closest to McCreary County: Fulton County (2.8), Marshall County (2.8), Wolfe County (2.9).