I used to chase pH first and it honestly felt like a loop that never ended. I’d lower pH one day, test the next afternoon, and it would already be creeping back up again. The water never looked bad, but the numbers kept drifting.
What finally made it easier was focusing on alkalinity first like you mentioned. TA really does act like a buffer. When mine was sitting around 130 to 140, the pH would constantly climb because every bit of aeration from the returns and surface movement was pushing it upward. Once I slowly brought alkalinity down closer to the 80 range, the pH stopped bouncing around nearly as much.
The sequence that works for me now is adjusting alkalinity first, letting the pump run for a few hours so everything mixes well, and then checking pH again afterward. Most of the time the pH ends up much closer to where it needs to be once TA is in the right neighborhood.
Another thing I noticed is how much aeration affects it. My pool runs a Hayward Super Pump and the returns ripple the surface pretty hard, which naturally pushes pH up over time. When alkalinity is high that effect gets amplified. Once TA was dialed in, the pH drift slowed down a lot and I stopped having to tweak it every couple of days.
It’s not a perfect rule every time, but in practice starting with alkalinity has made balancing the rest of the water feel way less like chasing numbers. Anyone else notice pH behaving differently depending on how much surface agitation their pool has?
