You need to stop listening to pool store guy. Marie is giving you solid advice, and can help you get it straightened out, but much of what she's going to advise you to do goes against standard pool-store advice. Remember, they're in the business to make money, and most of them don't own or maintain pools--they regurgitate what they've been told by the chemical reps. Marie knows her stuff!

One quick correction--in an earlier post she said to add baking soda if your pH goes down to 7.0 to raise it to 7.2--she meant Borax (which you caught already). Just wanted to eliminate any confusion. You don't want to add baking soda because it raises TA, and yours is already too high.

Janet