How hard is the water in Pierce County, ND?
12.8 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Pierce County, ND is 219 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 12.8 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 40 samples at 5 sites between 1991 and 2003, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 10 and 25.9 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: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 12.8 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. Because Pierce County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 0.7 to 79.4 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Pierce County was 11.7 mg/L and the hardest 1,360 mg/L, a 116-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 25.9 gpg and the bottom quarter below 10 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 10 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.4 gpg
5 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 172 mg/L. 35 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 331.3 mg/L. In Pierce County the rivers and lakes come out 9.4 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 279 lb of salt a year (7 bags of 40 lb, about $50), 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 $150 a year.
Sizing at 12.8 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 768 | 24,000 | 93 lb |
| 2 | 1,536 | 24,000 | 187 lb |
| 4 | 3,072 | 24,000 | 374 lb |
| 6 | 4,608 | 40,000 | 561 lb |
Pierce County against the rest of North Dakota
Among the 53 North Dakota counties with data, Pierce County is number 45 of 53 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 61% of counties.
Softest in North Dakota: Hettinger County at 1.1 gpg. Hardest: Walsh County at 54 gpg. Closest to Pierce County: Burke County (13.3), Billings County (11.8), Bowman County (11.7).