Richfield, WI water hardness
Richfield water hardness starts with your own well
There is no Richfield water hardness figure to look up. The village has no water utility, every home is on a private well, and each well carries its own hardness. This page covers how a household finds its number and what to do with it once it has one.
Call (262) 829-5961Mon to Fri, 7am to 5pmSource: Village of Richfield groundwater monitoring program
Why no one publishes a Richfield number
A published hardness figure normally comes from a utility that samples its own supply and reports the results. Richfield has no utility to do that, and the Village's groundwater monitoring program found no need to consider a municipal supply. The sampling a city does for its customers falls, in Richfield, to each household.
Three places your number can come from
A lab report. A Wisconsin state-certified lab can test a sample from your well, and its report will show hardness, often in milligrams per liter.
An earlier report. Sellers and past owners sometimes leave one in the house. Its numbers are worth reading, but so is its date, because the Village's groundwater program describes the sand and gravel holding the water here as open to the surface, or nearly so.
The plumber's reading. On installation day, before a single connection is made, the plumber measures the hardness at your kitchen tap. If there is no lab report at all, that reading is where the softener's setup begins.
Turning a lab figure into grains
Softener settings run in grains per gallon, while lab reports often use milligrams per liter. Divide the lab figure by 17.1 to convert it.
Then the USGS scale gives the result a name. Up to 60 milligrams per liter is soft; from 61 through 120 is moderately hard; from 121 through 180 is hard; anything past 180, roughly 10.5 grains, is very hard.
Why a neighbor's report will not do
Two wells in one village can draw from different depths and different deposits. In Richfield, where most of the ground is sand and gravel lying close under the surface, a report from down the road describes down the road.
What the call does with your number
On the call, read us the hardness line and the date of the report. With the number of people in the house, that is what the softener is sized from.
No number yet is fine: the reading at your tap on installation day fills the gap, and after the work the tap is tested again until hardness reads zero.
Common questions
Is there an average hardness for Richfield wells?
Not a published one, and this site does not estimate one. An average would tell you nothing certain about the well under your own house.
Does the plumber's reading replace a lab test?
For hardness, it gives the number the softener needs. It does not cover bacteria or nitrate, which a softener is not designed to treat and which belong with a state-certified lab.
More for Richfield homes
- Water softener installation in Richfield, WI
- Water softener replacement in Richfield, WI
- Well water softeners in Richfield, WI
- Richfield water guides
- About Richfield Water Softener Co.
- Water softener quotes in Richfield, WI
- What Richfield's groundwater program means for your well
- Does your Richfield well need a softener?
- Buying a house in Richfield: the well and the softener
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