How hard is the water in Stafford County, KS?
13.5 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Stafford County, KS is 231 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 13.5 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 117 samples at 11 sites between 1991 and 2017, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 12 and 16.4 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 13.5 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 4.8 to 21.3 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Stafford County was 82 mg/L and the hardest 365 mg/L, a 4-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 16.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 12 gpg.
Wells 10.7 gpg, rivers and lakes 13.9 gpg
2 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 183.5 mg/L. 115 surface samples from 9 sites put it at 238 mg/L. In Stafford County the rivers and lakes come out 3.2 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 295 lb of salt a year (8 bags of 40 lb, about $53), 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 $153 a year.
Sizing at 13.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 810 | 24,000 | 99 lb |
| 2 | 1,620 | 24,000 | 197 lb |
| 4 | 3,240 | 24,000 | 394 lb |
| 6 | 4,860 | 40,000 | 591 lb |
Stafford County against the rest of Kansas
Among the 105 Kansas counties with data, Stafford County is number 65 of 105 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 64% of counties.
Softest in Kansas: Woodson County at 6.3 gpg. Hardest: Linn County at 114.5 gpg. Closest to Stafford County: Wichita County (13.5), Kiowa County (13.4), Brown County (13.4).