How hard is the water in Sargent County, ND?
32.5 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Sargent County, ND is 556 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 32.5 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 106 samples at 6 sites between 1991 and 2023, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 22 and 57.7 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 32.5 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 21.5 to 71.9 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Sargent County was 368.5 mg/L and the hardest 1,230 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 57.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 22 gpg.
Wells 21.6 gpg, rivers and lakes 63.1 gpg
10 groundwater samples from 3 wells put the median at 370 mg/L. 96 surface samples from 3 sites put it at 1080 mg/L. In Sargent County the rivers and lakes come out 41.5 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 48,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 709 lb of salt a year (18 bags of 40 lb, about $128), 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 $228 a year.
Sizing at 32.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,950 | 24,000 | 237 lb |
| 2 | 3,900 | 32,000 | 475 lb |
| 4 | 7,800 | 64,000 | 949 lb |
| 6 | 11,700 | twin tank | 1,424 lb |
Sargent County against the rest of North Dakota
Among the 53 North Dakota counties with data, Sargent County is number 8 of 53 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 96% of counties.
Softest in North Dakota: Hettinger County at 1.1 gpg. Hardest: Walsh County at 54 gpg. Closest to Sargent County: Williams County (32.3), Golden Valley County (35.4), Steele County (35.8).