Hi All. Great forum. I dismissed my pool service towards the end of April and made the move to bleach. Gotta say my water looks better than it has in years.

I've got an alkalinity issue and am hoping to get some ideas or insight as to why my alkalinity won't go down.

The pool that came with the house is an inground plaster pool. There is 1 main drain, 1 skimmer and 3 returns. I currently have one return plugged up to get higher pressure at the other two for fountains. One fountain is designed for pools and shoots a cascade of water 10' in the air; the other "fountain" is a piece of pvc tubing that shoots water in about a 4' arc. I've got lots of bubbles and the filter is running 24/7.

I started aerating to lower Alk about 3 weeks ago. The starting number from the pool store on 4/23 was 210. My own alk test this morning was 180.

My new routine is to test the pH/alk first thing in the morning. It would make my day to see a real drop in the number... Check the pH, which is invariably at 7.4, pour in a gallon of muriatic to get pH back down to 7.2 and continue aerating, hoping for a better alk number in the evening.

My questions to the forum are these: Is it normal for it to take this long for such a modest drop in alkalinity considering that I'm aerating 24/7 and keeping the pH low? And is it normal to pour in a gallon of muriatic each time I want to lower the pH from 7.4 to 7.2? I added 4 gallons of muriatic to my pool this weekend alone.

Pool is 35K gallons
FC: 6
TC: 6
pH: 7.2
TA: 180
CYA: 48 or so
Calcium: 500

Thanks in advance for any insights you can give me!