Whole House Water Softeners in Richland Hills

Among Fort Worth’s customer cities, Richland Hills is one whose own wells carry a large part of the load. The city's drought contingency plan, adopted by ordinance on May 13, 2024, states that the city buys roughly 60 percent of what it produces from Fort Worth and pumps the other 40 percent from city-owned wells, five of them active, drawing on the Trinity and the Paluxy. The 2025 water quality report describes the supply the same way, ground and surface water, with the surface share bought from Fort Worth and the groundwater operated by Richland Hills. The plan also binds the city to the drought stages Fort Worth and the Tarrant Regional Water District impose for as long as any part of its supply comes from Fort Worth, which is the mark of a wholesale customer, even one that pumps much of its own. Fort Worth's 2017 service area planning, by contrast, listed Richland Hills as 100 percent served by Fort Worth, a planning assumption the city's own 2024 figures do not match. The federal facility inventory lists the five wells by site and formation: Booth Place has a Trinity well and a Paluxy well, Rena Street the same pair, and Park Place a Paluxy well; two others, Evergreen Street and the Park Trinity well, were plugged in 2006. Each well site is a small plant with a ground tank of its own, 0.21 million gallons at Booth, Rena and Evergreen and 0.15 at Park, with a 1.0 million gallon ground tank at the South 40 station and elevated tanks of 0.5 million gallons on Highway 26 at Scruggs and 0.1 on London Street. Fort Worth water enters through a single metered vault near Handley Ederville Road.

The hardness on this page, 108 to 150 ppm measured as calcium carbonate, is the Fort Worth range, the figure the city's report carries for the surface water it buys. Fort Worth's own 2025 table fills in what that range is made of: calcium between 37.6 and 48.1 ppm, magnesium between 3.45 and 7.35, bicarbonate between 99.7 and 120, alkalinity between 99.7 and 124, dissolved solids between 182 and 244, sodium between 19.5 and 27.9, and 6 to 9 grains to the gallon. USGS calls 108 moderately hard and 150 hard. The well water is the open question. Richland Hills' report prints its results table as a page image, and no published figure for hardness, sodium or dissolved solids from the Trinity and Paluxy wells has been found, so this page does not claim one.

With 40 percent of the supply coming from wells, a Richland Hills tap is more likely than most Fort Worth customers’ taps to sit off the published range, and in a direction no public figure tells us, and the mix depends on which wells are running and how the city blends them into the mains with Fort Worth water. Two houses on different sides of the city can reasonably see different numbers on the same day. That makes the measurement at your own tap worth more here than the table. For a softener, size at least to the 150 ppm end of the Fort Worth range, some 8.8 grains per gallon, then let the free water test show whether the wells push your figure higher or lower; the measured number wins.

Sources: City of Richland Hills, Ordinance No. 1497-24 adopting the Drought Contingency Plan, May 13, 2024 · City of Richland Hills, 2025 Water Quality Report · City of Fort Worth, 2025 Water Quality Report · City of Fort Worth, Water Impact Fee Update · USGS Water Science School: Hardness of Water · EPA SDWIS via Envirofacts REST, water system facility records records for PWS TX2200022