How hard is the water in Sweetwater County, WY?
14.3 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Sweetwater County, WY is 244 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 14.3 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 57 samples at 53 sites between 1990 and 2023, 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 5.3 and 30.7 gpg. That spread crosses a decision line, so some homes here land on a different answer. A $10 test strip on your own tap settles it. Confidence in the county figure: high (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 14.3 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. Because Sweetwater County straddles a decision line, check your own tap with a $10 test strip before you spend anything.
More on sizing a softener for your household.
From 0.1 to 235.4 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Sweetwater County was 1.7 mg/L and the hardest 4,030 mg/L, a 2,371-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 30.7 gpg and the bottom quarter below 5.3 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 14.3 gpg, rivers and lakes 19.3 gpg
57 groundwater samples from 53 wells put the median at 244 mg/L. 769 surface samples from 18 sites put it at 330.1 mg/L. In Sweetwater County the rivers and lakes come out 5.0 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 311 lb of salt a year (8 bags of 40 lb, about $56), 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 $156 a year.
Sizing at 14.3 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 858 | 24,000 | 104 lb |
| 2 | 1,716 | 24,000 | 209 lb |
| 4 | 3,432 | 32,000 | 418 lb |
| 6 | 5,148 | 40,000 | 626 lb |
Sweetwater County against the rest of Wyoming
Among the 23 Wyoming counties with data, Sweetwater County is number 10 of 23 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 67% of counties.
Softest in Wyoming: Park County at 1.4 gpg. Hardest: Natrona County at 124.4 gpg. Closest to Sweetwater County: Platte County (14.4), Uinta County (14.5), Lincoln County (13.8).