Thanks Evan. I think I finally have my head wrapped around this.

I'm 100% certain my difficulties have been from aerating WHILE trying to lower PH. Doesn't work, for me.

Now that I made progress and can live with the result, I noticed I'm down about an inch of water from evaporation (and probably my splash out from the cannon balls), and dread having to refill soon.

The guy that runs our town's water plant was in my office a few days ago. I asked him if our alkalinity always runs high (320 when I tested, with a PH of 7.2). He said yes

I have a vinyl lined pool. If I followed Ben's "Run a high PH" page, I'll end up over 8 with an alk in the mid 250s.

Is this a problem at all if I just let the pool do what it wants? What would I be risking?