How hard is the water in McHenry County, ND?
2.8 grains per gallon
You do not need a softener here.
The median hardness measured in McHenry County, ND is 48 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 2.8 gpg. That is soft on the USGS scale. It comes from 33 samples at 11 sites between 1990 and 2023, drawn from groundwater wells, which is what most taps and private wells in the county draw on.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 2.1 and 14.2 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: high (how it is measured).
What to do next
You can skip the softener. At 2.8 gpg the most a softener would fix is the odd water spot. If a salesperson in McHenry County says otherwise, ask to see their reading in grains per gallon and compare it with this one. Because McHenry 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.
From 0.6 to 26.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in McHenry County was 9.6 mg/L and the hardest 461 mg/L, a 48-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 14.2 gpg and the bottom quarter below 2.1 gpg. So even in a soft county, a handful of wells here produce water hard enough to scale a heater.
Wells 2.8 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.7 gpg
33 groundwater samples from 11 wells put the median at 47.8 mg/L. 892 surface samples from 18 sites put it at 337.5 mg/L. In McHenry County the rivers and lakes come out 16.9 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.
McHenry County against the rest of North Dakota
Among the 53 North Dakota counties with data, McHenry County is number 51 of 53 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 21% of counties.
Softest in North Dakota: Hettinger County at 1.1 gpg. Hardest: Walsh County at 54 gpg. Closest to McHenry County: Adams County (3.4), Sioux County (3.6), Morton County (1.9).