How hard is the water in Wheeler County, TX?
21 grains per gallon
A softener will pay its way here.
The median hardness measured in Wheeler County, TX is 360 mg/L as calcium carbonate, which is 21 gpg. That is very hard on the USGS scale. It comes from 29 samples at 4 sites between 1996 and 2016, drawn from every sampling site in the county, wells and surface water together.
How much it varies here
Half the sites came in between 12.2 and 32.4 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: medium (how it is measured).
What to do next
At 21 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 11.9 to 40.7 gpg
The softest single sample on record in Wheeler County was 204 mg/L and the hardest 696.5 mg/L, a 3-fold gap. The top quarter of sites read above 32.4 gpg and the bottom quarter below 12.2 gpg.
Wells 12.1 gpg, rivers and lakes 35.2 gpg
2 groundwater samples from 2 wells put the median at 207.5 mg/L. 27 surface samples from 2 sites put it at 602.3 mg/L. In Wheeler County the rivers and lakes come out 23.1 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 32,000-grain unit covers a week between regenerations. Expect about 459 lb of salt a year (12 bags of 40 lb, about $83), 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 $183 a year.
Sizing at 21 gpg
| People | Grains a day | Unit | Salt a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,260 | 24,000 | 153 lb |
| 2 | 2,520 | 24,000 | 307 lb |
| 4 | 5,040 | 40,000 | 613 lb |
| 6 | 7,560 | 64,000 | 920 lb |
Wheeler County against the rest of Texas
Among the 217 Texas counties with data, Wheeler County is number 53 of 217 counting from the hardest. Across the whole country it is harder than 86% of counties.
Softest in Texas: Nacogdoches County at 0.3 gpg. Hardest: Ward County at 218.5 gpg. Closest to Wheeler County: Hood County (21.1), Hemphill County (20.7), Reagan County (20.6).