It depends on which utility serves your home. Several South Florida utilities report softening as part of their treatment process. Fort Lauderdale's 2025 report says the city's plants use lime softening or nanofiltration membrane processes. Those reports cover the period before Prospect Lake began feeding the system in September 2026, so we have no figures from after that change. The City of Boca Raton's Glades Road plant uses both lime softening and membrane softening, according to its 2025 report, though that report prints no hardness figure. WASD's 2025 report prints no hardness figure for its main system either, but Florida DEP's 2024 sample file shows calcium hardness medians of 45.3 to 81.3 mg/L at the entry points of the three main WASD plants. That is calcium hardness only, and total hardness runs higher. If your utility publishes no hardness figure, call them directly rather than trying to find it in the report.
A softener is not something we cover here, but you can read about how the two types differ on our softener vs. filter page. Whether whole-house equipment makes sense depends on where you want filtered water and what your plumbing allows. If you want to talk it through, reach out to us. You can read more about whole-house options on our guide to whole-house filters in Florida.
