How hard is the water in St. Joseph County, IN?

16.2 grains per gallon

A softener will pay its way here.

The median hardness measured in St. Joseph County, IN is 278 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 16.2 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 33 samples at 31 sites between 1992 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 13.1 and 19.2 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 16.2 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 9.5 to 26.6 gpg

The softest single sample on record in St. Joseph County was 163 mg/L and the hardest 456 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 19.2 gpg and the bottom quarter below 13.1 gpg.

What a softener would cost to run

For a household of 3, a 24,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 355 lb of salt a year (9 bags of 40 lb, about $64), 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 $164 a year.

Sizing at 16.2 gpg

St. Joseph County against the rest of Indiana

Among the 91 Indiana counties with data, St. Joseph County is number 53 of 91 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 73% of counties.

Softest in Indiana: Brown County at 3.8 gpg. Hardest: Warrick County at 40.3 gpg. Closest to St. Joseph County: Putnam County (16.3), Posey County (16.1), Parke County (16.4).