How hard is the water in Rice County, KS?
22 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Rice County, KS is 377 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 22 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 435 samples at 12 sites between 1990 and 2016, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 18.8 and 25.6 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 22 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 8.9 to 32.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Rice County was 152 mg/L and the hardest 550 mg/L, a 4-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 25.6 gpg and the bottom quarter below 18.8 gpg.
Wells 8.9 gpg, rivers and lakes 23.4 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 152 mg/L. 434 surface samples from 11 sites put it at 400 mg/L. In Rice County the rivers and lakes come out 14.5 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 32,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 481 lb of salt a year (13 bags of 40 lb, about $87), 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 $187 a year.
Sizing at 22 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,320 | 24,000 | 161 lb |
| 2 | 2,640 | 24,000 | 321 lb |
| 4 | 5,280 | 40,000 | 642 lb |
| 6 | 7,920 | 64,000 | 964 lb |
Rice County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Rice County is number 30 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 88% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Rice County: Finney County (22.1), Jackson County (21.6), Lane County (21.6).