How hard is the water in Phillips County, AR?
5.5 grains per gallon
Optional: a softener helps, but plenty of homes skip it.
The median hardness measured in Phillips County, AR is 94 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 5.5 gpg. That is moderately hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 58 samples at 8 sites between 1994 and 2026, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 4.8 and 6.8 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 5.5 gpg this is your call. Look for white film on glasses and crust on the shower head: if you see little of either, you can live without one. If you do want one, a 24,000-grain unit is enough, so ask for that size rather than a bigger one.
More on when a softener is not worth it.
From 2.0 to 27.6 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Phillips County was 34.2 mg/L and the hardest 472 mg/L, a 14-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 6.8 gpg and the bottom quarter below 4.8 gpg.
Wells 5.4 gpg, rivers and lakes 5.5 gpg
3 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 92.5 mg/L. 55 surface samples from 5 sites put it at 94.6 mg/L. In Phillips County the rivers and lakes come out 0.1 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.
What a softener would cost to run
For a household of 3, a 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 119 lb of salt a year (3 bags of 40 lb, about $21), 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 $121 a year.
Sizing at 5.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 330 | 24,000 | 40 lb |
| 2 | 660 | 24,000 | 80 lb |
| 4 | 1,320 | 24,000 | 161 lb |
| 6 | 1,980 | 24,000 | 241 lb |
Phillips County against the rest of Arkansas
Among the 75 Arkansas counties with data, Phillips County is number 30 of 75 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 33% of counties.
Softest in Arkansas: Hempstead County at 0.1 gpg. Hardest: Prairie County at 23.9 gpg. Closest to Phillips County: Little River County (5.3), Lee County (5.7), Woodruff County (4.5).