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Point of entryWater softeners — where they're actually warranted
Hardness in our service area ranges from about 1.8 grains per gallon to 20. A softener is excellent equipment at the top of that range and a waste of your money at the bottom.
Published hardness across our service area
Same region, same company, tenfold difference. This is why we won't quote a softener over the phone.
| Area | Reported hardness | Softener warranted? |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado Springs — Pine Valley & McCullough plants | ~1.8 gpg (30.7 mg/L) | Usually no. This is soft water. |
| Colorado Springs — other plants, incl. Bailey / SDS | Not published by CSU | Test required. CSU states hardness varies by plant. |
| Woodland Park | 3.5–6.4 gpg (60–110 mg/L) | Judgment call. Depends on your priorities. |
| Castle Rock | 7.1 gpg avg (range 3.9–14) | Usually yes. |
| Private wells, eastern El Paso County | 0.4–29.8 gpg (avg ~6.5) | Test required. Enormous variation well to well. |
| Fountain | 10 gpg winter → 20 gpg summer | Yes — and it needs seasonal adjustment. |
| Security | ~16 gpg (calculated from district's Ca/Mg) | Yes. |
| Pueblo | 13.9 gpg (238.4 mg/L) | Yes. |
Sources as cited on our water quality by area page. Figures are the utilities' own published reporting for the years noted there. Colorado Springs figure is the average of 29.3–33.2 mg/L reported for the Pine Valley and McCullough plants.
What softening actually does
Ion exchange removes calcium and magnesium and replaces them with sodium. The practical results, on genuinely hard water, are not subtle: scale stops building inside your water heater and on fixtures, soap and detergent go further, glassware stops spotting, and laundry comes out softer.
On 1.8-grain water, none of those problems exist to solve. That's the whole point of this page.
Sizing and salt
A softener is sized on your hardness multiplied by your household's daily water use. Oversized units waste salt and water regenerating unnecessarily; undersized units run out of capacity between regenerations and let hard water through. We size on your measured hardness and your actual occupancy.
In Fountain we set it for the season and adjust it, because a single setting is wrong half the year.
Pricing Quoted in writing after your free water test. A softener is sized on your measured hardness and your household's water use — that sizing is the price, which is why we test first.
Our position If your test comes back soft, we'll tell you not to buy one. In writing.
Find out your real hardness
Free in-home test. Takes about 45 minutes.
Common questions
How do I know if I actually have hard water?
Look up your utility, or let us test. Published figures in our service area range from about 1.8 grains per gallon in mountain-sourced Colorado Springs to 20 grains in Fountain in summer. That's a tenfold difference inside a 20-minute drive. Signs worth paying attention to: white crust on faucets and shower heads, spots on glassware out of the dishwasher, soap that won't lather, and a water heater that's getting noisy.
Will you sell me a softener in Colorado Springs?
Only if your test justifies it. On mountain-sourced CSU water at roughly 1.8 grains, it usually doesn't, and we'll tell you that in writing. On the east side served through the Southern Delivery System from Pueblo Reservoir, the picture can be different — CSU says hardness depends on which plant serves you and doesn't publish a number for every plant. So we test. That's not a hedge, it's the only honest answer available.
Does a softener add salt to my drinking water?
Ion exchange softening exchanges hardness minerals for sodium, so softened water contains more sodium than it did. How much depends on how hard the incoming water was. This is worth knowing if anyone in the house is on a sodium-restricted diet — that's a conversation for your doctor, not for us. Two practical options: leave the kitchen cold tap unsoftened, or install reverse osmosis for drinking water, which is what most of our customers do anyway.
My water is hard in summer and fine in winter. What's going on?
You're probably in Fountain. The City runs surface water alone from November through April and blends in city wells from May through October, and it publishes softener settings for both: 10 grains in winter, 20 in summer. A softener set once in November is wrong by June. We re-set it seasonally as part of the service plan.
Salt-free conditioners — do they work?
They are a different technology doing a different job. Template-assisted crystallization conditions hardness minerals so they're less likely to form scale, but it does not remove hardness — a hardness test on conditioned water reads the same as it did going in. If your goal is scale control and you don't want to handle salt, it's a legitimate option and we'll quote one. If your goal is the feel of soft water in the shower and less detergent in the laundry, it won't get you there. Anyone selling a salt-free unit as a softener is misrepresenting it.
Find out what's actually in your water.
We test at your kitchen sink, walk you through the results and your utility's own published report, and give you a written recommendation. If your water doesn't need treatment, we'll say so and leave.