How hard is the water in Rooks County, KS?
29.5 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Rooks County, KS is 505 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 29.5 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 388 samples at 10 sites between 1990 and 2018, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 24.8 and 43.4 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 29.5 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 11.7 to 58.1 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Rooks County was 200 mg/L and the hardest 995 mg/L, a 5-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 43.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 24.8 gpg.
Wells 46 gpg, rivers and lakes 29.2 gpg
1 groundwater samples from 1 wells put the median at 788 mg/L. 387 surface samples from 9 sites put it at 500 mg/L. In Rooks County the wells come out 16.8 gpg harder. Groundwater sits in contact with rock for years and picks up calcium and magnesium as it goes, so wells usually read harder. A utility here that draws from the river can deliver noticeably different water from a private well next door.
What a softener would cost to run
For a household of 3, a 40,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 644 lb of salt a year (17 bags of 40 lb, about $116), 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 $216 a year.
Sizing at 29.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,770 | 24,000 | 215 lb |
| 2 | 3,540 | 32,000 | 431 lb |
| 4 | 7,080 | 64,000 | 861 lb |
| 6 | 10,620 | 80,000 | 1,292 lb |
Rooks County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Rooks County is number 12 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 94% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Rooks County: Smith County (29.1), Clark County (28.6), Ness County (28.6).