How hard is the water in Osborne County, KS?
31.4 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Osborne County, KS is 538 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 31.4 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 464 samples at 14 sites between 1990 and 2018, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 27.8 and 35.3 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 31.4 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 24.2 to 40.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Osborne County was 415 mg/L and the hardest 700 mg/L, a 2-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 35.3 gpg and the bottom quarter below 27.8 gpg.
Wells 27.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 31.5 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 475 mg/L. 463 surface samples from 13 sites put it at 540 mg/L. In Osborne 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 40,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 686 lb of salt a year (18 bags of 40 lb, about $123), 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 $223 a year.
Sizing at 31.4 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,884 | 24,000 | 229 lb |
| 2 | 3,768 | 32,000 | 458 lb |
| 4 | 7,536 | 64,000 | 917 lb |
| 6 | 11,304 | 80,000 | 1,375 lb |
Osborne County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Osborne County is number 8 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 95% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Osborne County: Ellis County (31.3), Edwards County (30.8), Dickinson County (30.4).