High Chlorine since adding IntelliPH to system

[banjeman]

I have owned a 13500 gallon plaster pool using an SWG for almost three years. I have struggled to maintain proper PH (and at times chlorine levels). I have staining on the step areas, and earlier this year have noticed a different type of staining on my walls. I travel a lot and my wife does not help maintain the pool. So I purchased an IntelliPH (I think that is it) that adds muratic acid automatically while the pool runs. Since adding it I am struggling to maintain a decent chlorine or PH balance
As of right now I have the following measurements:
FC of 10
TC of 10
PH of 7.4
TA of 103
CH of 233
CYA of 70
SALT of roughly 3559 (SWG reading)
Last pool store test (a couple weeks ago) showed no metals, no pool test has ever shown metals in my pool.
I use a Taylor K-2005 test kit, I added the FAS-DPD (taylor) kit for checking chlorine. I recently purchased a ColorQ 7 digital tester (I have found the ColorQ is close in all the readings except PH)

Anyway it is really weird how my pool is reacting. I used to always have to run my SWG (IC40) 40-50 percent and struggled to maintain chlorine of even 2-3. Since adding the IntelliPH my Chlorine levels have never been lower than 5 and this is running the SWG at 15% and the pump less. It seems as my PH gets lowered the chlorine increases.
After seeing the chlorine go to 10 yesterday I lowered the SWG to 5% then an hour later stopped the pump all together. Having tested this morning as I like to do it in the evenings when I get home from work.

How high can I let my chlorine go before it causes problems? All my other readings seem to be OK and can't find anything about if high chlorine can damage the pool. Why is the fact I am dosing with Muractic acid on a constant basis allowed me to basically turn off my SWG. I dont think I can actually turn it off because then the IntelliPH won't dose and my ph will start rising again. I am trying to get my chlorine to the recommended 3 for salt water pools

I have many more questions/concerns (mainly what the heck are these stains and how to get rid of them?), but I will save those for further down my posting history.

NOTE: i tried to setup my profile (so my signature would have my pool stats) but it said I couldn't access it. That is just weird.

[PoolDoc]

. . . membership upgraded.

I have no idea why you are experiencing apparent increased efficiency . . . unless controlling pH is keeping your cell plates cleaner.

[Poolsean]

I don't think its a fair assessment to compare your ability to control the chlorine with the out of control pH vs in control, so let's deal with the current conditions. The Intellichlor operates in 6-7 LED increments, so you're not able to fine tune the output of the system unless you're running the salt system through an in-house electronic control system (like the intellitouch).
1) Are you controlling the Intellichlor through an Intellitouch?
2) How many hours per day is your pump running?
3) You mentioned that your colorQ test was different from the store test results on the pH. How much different was it?
4) Staining - What color are the stains? and do you have a heater?
5) Have you added any algaecides, clarifiers, metal removers?

[banjeman]

1. I have IntelliPH which allows me to control the intelliChlor.
2. I run it 8 hours a day (but I cut back to 7 hours just in case it was due to the amount of time i was running the system).
3. I have a Taylor 2005 kit with a Taylor DPD-DFAS for chlorine (basically turning it into a Taylor 2006 kit) AND a ColorQ. (These two differ on PH, but I trust the Taylor Kit more).
4a. The staining has been slowly developing over the last 3 years, I thought I had it under control until around February it started getting worse (I assumed is was because I wasn't controlling PH good enough so I purchased the IntelliPH to better control PH). I believe the staining is calcium buildup. I will post pictures in a couple days we have had tons of rains the last couple days, so right now I am just trying to get the rain water out of my pool. I do not attribute the staining to recent events.
4b. I do not have a heater.
5. Not recently, about 1.5 years ago I was told to use phosfree (which I did, but it seemed to make controlling my chemicals worse so I haven't added anything since). Last year I also had a pool guy improperly maintain my pool. He was treating it like a chlorine pool, even though it was a SW pool (I was out of town for a couple months). When his boss got on him he came and dumped way to much salt in the pool and I had to partially drain it because the TDS went through the roof and the Salt content was like 4800. I immediately fired them because they wanted to charge me to do a partial drain of the pool due to my high TDS which was because their tech over salted the pool.

I believe the chlorine is because I am running the pump too long and the temperature/Sun isnt hot enough. Generally in the winter months i only run it like 4 hours, maybe I jumped the gun on increasing the pump run time, because I was trying to dial in the intelliPH dosing and the percentage i figured wasn't enough so I increased run time, when i should have just increased dosage percentage.