new forum user

Thanks for helping me to register on poolforum.com. I am new to swimming pool care, and am now faced with looking after my in-laws old pool. I've guesstimated that it must be between 14 and 16k gallons. There is no heater and it uses a cartridge filter.
When I first began trying to understand things there was an algae problem beginning. It had only been treated with trichlor tabs from a floating erosion feeder for quite some time. Needless to say, the CYA levels were off the scale. The water in drought stricken southern Los Angeles county is hard and the pH is high. After having the old clay tree root permeated main sewer line from the house to the street replaced, I was able to use a small submersible pump to sucessfully drain off and refill about a third of the water. I then used liquid pool chlorine to raise the free chlorine level to about 17 ppm and kept it there for about two weeks late last summer. At that time the water temp was about 78°. I replaced both cartridges in the filter as the old ones were in very poor shape. Things look beautiful now and I have allowed the chlorine levels to move back down to about 4ppm. I have added small amounts of muriatic acid to move the pH lower but the pH keeps creeping up to 8 or even higher. The CYA is still about 50 or 60 ppm. Total alk and calcium hardness generally test at the high end of acceptable ranges. I am interested in allowing the pool pH to remain relatively high, and would be curious if anyone has input on this idea, as touched upon in this article:
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/hiphpool.html

all the best,

Tom