How hard is the water in Porter County, IN?
10.2 grains per gallon
A softener is worth it here.
The median hardness measured in Porter County, IN is 174 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 10.2 gpg. That is hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 336 samples at 55 sites between 1990 and 2013, 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 and 21.7 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
At 10.2 gpg a softener is worth getting, mainly to protect the water heater and cut soap use. Get at least two quotes, ask each installer what grain capacity they are fitting, and check it against the sizing table below. Because Porter 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 0.6 to 67.8 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Porter County was 9.8 mg/L and the hardest 1,160 mg/L, a 118-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 21.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 2 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 10.2 gpg, rivers and lakes 21.2 gpg
336 groundwater samples from 55 wells put the median at 174 mg/L. 1,130 surface samples from 34 sites put it at 362.5 mg/L. In Porter County the rivers and lakes come out 11.0 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 222 lb of salt a year (6 bags of 40 lb, about $40), 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 $140 a year.
Sizing at 10.2 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 612 | 24,000 | 74 lb |
| 2 | 1,224 | 24,000 | 149 lb |
| 4 | 2,448 | 24,000 | 298 lb |
| 6 | 3,672 | 32,000 | 447 lb |
Porter County against the rest of Indiana
Among the 91 Indiana counties with data, Porter County is number 80 of 91 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 52% of counties.
Softest in Indiana: Brown County at 3.8 gpg. Hardest: Warrick County at 40.3 gpg. Closest to Porter County: Crawford County (10.1), Martin County (10.4), Spencer County (10.4).