How hard is the water in Refugio County, TX?
16.9 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Refugio County, TX is 290 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.9 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 76 samples at 4 sites between 1990 and 2013, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 11.6 and 20.7 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 16.9 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 3.1 to 24.7 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Refugio County was 53.6 mg/L and the hardest 422 mg/L, an 8-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 20.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 11.6 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 3.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.4 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 53.6 mg/L. 75 surface samples from 3 sites put it at 332 mg/L. In Refugio County the rivers and lakes come out 16.3 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 369 lb of salt a year (10 bags of 40 lb, about $66), 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 $166 a year.
Sizing at 16.9 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,014 | 24,000 | 123 lb |
| 2 | 2,028 | 24,000 | 247 lb |
| 4 | 4,056 | 32,000 | 493 lb |
| 6 | 6,084 | 48,000 | 740 lb |
Refugio County against the rest of Texas
Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Refugio County is number 73 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 76% of counties.
Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Refugio County: Midland County (16.9), Bell County (16.7), Comal County (16.7).