How hard is the water in Tooele County, UT?
19.5 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Tooele County, UT is 334 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 19.5 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 726 samples at 312 sites between 1990 and 2021, 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 14.2 and 29.9 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 19.5 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 0.5 to 284.7 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Tooele County was 7.9 mg/L and the hardest 4,874.3 mg/L, a 617-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 29.9 gpg and the bottom quarter below 14.2 gpg. So even here some sites draw water soft enough to need nothing at all.
Wells 19.5 gpg, rivers and lakes 12 gpg
726 groundwater samples from 312 wells put the median at 333.5 mg/L. 365 surface samples from 51 sites put it at 206 mg/L. In Tooele County the wells come out 7.5 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 32,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 425 lb of salt a year (11 bags of 40 lb, about $77), 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 $177 a year.
Sizing at 19.5 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,170 | 24,000 | 142 lb |
| 2 | 2,340 | 24,000 | 285 lb |
| 4 | 4,680 | 40,000 | 569 lb |
| 6 | 7,020 | 64,000 | 854 lb |
Tooele County against the rest of Utah
Among the 29 Utah counties with data, Tooele County is number 8 of 29 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 83% of counties.
Softest in Utah: Davis County at 9 gpg. Hardest: Emery County at 151.3 gpg. Closest to Tooele County: San Juan County (19.6), Carbon County (19), Sanpete County (18.9).