Measured
Population, single-family homes and new-home permits are measured by the U.S. Census Bureau and pulled live for the place you name. A permit is the paper a builder gets before building a house.
For owners and general managers
How to Size Your Water Treatment Market With Census Data
Most market sizing in this industry starts with a population figure and a guess. This one starts with the real number of single-family homes where you work and the real number of new-home permits pulled last year, both measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, and ends with how many softeners and whole-house filters change hands in your market every year. Here is the chain, walked through one real metro area, with every assumption labeled as one.
Any calculator that will not tell you which of its numbers are guesses is not showing you a market. It is showing you a brochure.
Short answer
The Chain in One Paragraph
Start with the single-family homes in your market. Multiply by the share of homes that already have a softener in your hardness band. Replace a fixed share of those every year. Add the softeners going into new homes, from permits. Add the homes buying one for the first time. Cut the total in half, because half of softeners go through independent dealers and half through plumbers and retail. Then do the same for whole-house filters and add the two together. The arithmetic comes from a market calculator Jeff Hubbard built in his independent water treatment dealer days to forecast markets. The formulas are his, unchanged. What changed is that the inputs now come from the Census instead of a population guess.
Surveyed
How many homes have a softener or a whole-house filter, and how fast first-time buyers are added, come from Water Quality Association consumer surveys.
Assumed
Softener ownership by hardness band, the 50/50 split, softener life and filter life are assumptions, and the calculator says so next to each one. Two are Jeff Hubbard's, one is Roger Wakefield's, two are HALO's.
One real metro
Dallas-Fort Worth, Softeners, on the 5 to 10 Grain Band
Real Census numbers for the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area, run on the market calculator on 6 October 2026. The hardness band is the one you test in that market; Dallas reports 120 to 155 milligrams per liter, which is 7.0 to 9.1 grains.
| Step | Figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Single-family homes | 1,957,047 | U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimate, 2024 |
| Homes with a softener | 40 percent | Jeff Hubbard's rate for a 5 to 10 grain market, salt-based softeners only. Assumption. |
| Softeners installed | 782,819 | 1,957,047 times 40 percent |
| Softener life | 12.5 years | Roger Wakefield's national average, so 8 in 100 are replaced each year. Assumption. |
| Replacements a year | 62,626 | 782,819 times 8 percent |
| Into new homes | 15,916 | 2025 single-family permits, Census Building Permits Survey, at the same 40 percent |
| First-time buyers | 40,511 | 3.45 percent of the 1,174,228 homes without a softener. Water Quality Association surveys. |
| Changing hands a year | 119,052 | Replacements plus new homes plus first-time buyers |
| Plumber and retail half | 59,526 | Jeff Hubbard's 50/50 split between dealers and plumbers plus retail. Assumption. |
Totals are the calculator's, carried from unrounded figures, so adding the rounded rows by hand can land one unit off. The 3.45 percent is not a guess. Water Quality Association consumer surveys found 13 percent of households had a softener in 2017, 19 percent in 2019 and 25 percent in 2021, so the homes without one fell from 87 to 75 percent in four years: 12 points out of 87, spread over four years, is 3.45 percent a year.
Same metro, filters
Whole-House Filters Do Not Care About the Hardness Band
Chlorine and chloramine are on every city system, so the filter line runs the same in a soft-water town as a hard one. Same homes, same permits.
| Step | Figure | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Homes with a filter | 22 percent | Water Quality Association national consumer survey, January 2021, 1,413 households |
| Filters installed | 430,550 | 1,957,047 times 22 percent |
| Filter life | 10 years | One in ten replaced each year. HALO's figure; no public source gives a carbon tank a life. Assumption. |
| Replacements a year | 43,055 | 430,550 times 10 percent |
| Into new homes | 8,754 | 2025 permits at the same 22 percent. HALO assumption. |
| First-time buyers | 33,152 | 7.7 percent of the filters in place. Water Quality Association Consumer Insights Report, 2025. |
| Changing hands a year | 84,961 | Replacements plus new homes plus first-time buyers |
| Plumber and retail half | 42,481 | The same 50/50 split |
The pie and the slice
What One Percent of a Metro Looks Like
204,014
All tanks changing hands in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in a year: 119,052 softeners plus 84,961 whole-house filters.
102,007
The half that already goes through plumbers and retail. That half is the pie.
2,040
One percent of the whole market. At $7,000 a system, $14,280,000 a year. The calculator prints a dollar figure only if you type a price; $7,000 is the example because it is the midpoint of the installed range HALO reports and the same figure the revenue per truck calculator uses.
The calculator shows your share at 1 percent unless you type your own, up to 10 percent. Your trucks are the slice. What one truck does with its slice is on the revenue per truck calculator.
Run your own
How to Run It for Your Market in Two Minutes
Type your shop's address
Pick your metro area, county, city or ZIP, or switch to Service area and add up to 20 cities you serve. The calculator pulls the real homes and permits for that place.
Pick the hardness band you test
Over 20 grains, 10 to 20, 5 to 10, or under 5. The calculator asks because no city publishes hardness and no national database has it. You test it at the tap, which is the first thing the class teaches.
Leave the price blank, or type yours
The only dollar figure the page will ever show you is one you typed yourself. The share box is 1 percent unless you change it.
Read the two estimates on the screen
Permits are published by county and metro area, not by ZIP, so a ZIP result splits the county's permits by the ZIP's share of the county's homes. The screen says so where it applies.
If the calculator does not load on the page, open it directly at market.halowatertour.com.
Watch it
Roger on the Investment That Keeps Paying Back
Questions
Market Sizing Questions
How do you estimate the size of a water treatment market?
Start with the single-family homes in the area from the Census, multiply by the share that already own a softener in that hardness band, replace a fixed share every year, add new homes from permits and first-time buyers from survey data, then halve it for the share that goes through plumbers and retail. Do the same for whole-house filters and add the two.
How many water softeners are sold in Dallas-Fort Worth each year?
On real Census numbers run in October 2026, about 119,052 softeners change hands in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in a year on the 5 to 10 grain band: 62,626 replacements, 15,916 into new homes and 40,511 first-time buyers. About half, 59,526, go through plumbers and retail. Those figures rest on labeled assumptions you can see on the calculator.
How long does a water softener last?
The calculator uses 12.5 years as the national average, Roger Wakefield's figure, so 8 in 100 installed softeners are replaced each year. Jeff Hubbard's original sheet used 15 years. Both are assumptions and the calculator labels them that way.
Where does the Census data in the calculator come from?
Population and single-family homes come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey five-year estimate for 2024. New-home permits come from the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey for 2025, single-family units, by county and metro area. All three are pulled live for the place you type.
Why does the calculator ask for a hardness band instead of looking it up?
Because no city publishes hardness in a form a database can read and no national database has it. Hardness is on no federal list, so utilities are not required to print it. You test it at the tap, which is the first skill the class teaches.
Sources
Where These Facts Come From
Checked in October 2026. Census figures update every year and the calculator pulls them live, so your run will differ from the 6 October run shown here.
- HALO Water Tour market calculator (the chain, the Dallas-Fort Worth run of 6 October 2026, and the full disclosure table of every input)
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (population and single-family homes, five-year estimate, 2024)
- U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey (single-family permits, 2025)
- Water Quality Association, Consumer Insights Report and earlier consumer surveys (softener ownership 2017, 2019 and 2021; whole-house filter ownership 2021; Consumer Insights Report 2025), as cited on the calculator page
- Dallas water quality guide (the City of Dallas hardness range, 120 to 155 milligrams per liter)
Written by Roger Wakefield, Texas Master Plumber
45 years in the trade and LEED AP. Published . More about Roger or visit rogerwakefield.com.
Keep going
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