How hard is the water in Merrick County, NE?
16.3 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Merrick County, NE is 280 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.3 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 37 samples at 6 sites between 1993 and 2011, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 14.3 and 19.4 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: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 16.3 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 9.3 to 21.3 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Merrick County was 159 mg/L and the hardest 365 mg/L, a 2-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 19.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 14.3 gpg.
Wells 14.2 gpg, rivers and lakes 18 gpg
4 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 243 mg/L. 31 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 308 mg/L. In Merrick County the rivers and lakes come out 3.8 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 357 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $64), 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 $164 a year.
Sizing at 16.3 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 978 | 24,000 | 119 lb |
| 2 | 1,956 | 24,000 | 238 lb |
| 4 | 3,912 | 32,000 | 476 lb |
| 6 | 5,868 | 48,000 | 714 lb |
Merrick County against the rest of Nebraska
Among the 89 Nebraska counties with data, Merrick County is number 33 of 89 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 74% of counties.
Softest in Nebraska: Blaine County at 2.1 gpg. Hardest: Cedar County at 36.5 gpg. Closest to Merrick County: Clay County (16.4), Cass County (16.5), York County (16.2).