randy

Location Location location is what solar is all about. North Texas sounds very sunny so solar will work great as long as it's installed correctly. Just don't expect it to work late into fall or early spring. It will extend your swim season. It works in socal ~May-Oct.

Sounds like you have kids peeing in your pool. Thats why your pH is so low even though your alk is a little high I don't consider 150 all that high on a fiberglas pool 120 would be nice but a 6.8 pH is way too low.

If your skimmer has one hole and you don't have a tee on the suction side of the pump then you might have something clogging the skimmer fairly close to the opening causing most of the suction to come from the main drain.

Intelliflows a great option. I would never suggest a single pump pool/spa setup. The big 2hp pump is hard on all the other equipment not to mention the electric bill. Plus when your filter begins to get dirty your pressure will drop in the spa, with a 2 pump system thats not an issue.

Sounds like a high Alkalinity problem to me.

It always amazes us on the west coast how popular Hayward products are in the east. From the servicemans perspective they are not popular at all. On pools here you'll find 90% Purex(Pentair) filters mostly because the manifolds on the bottom and they're much easier to totally clean. As far as heaters are concerned the new Maxtherm is a great heater although it's just a rewraped sta-rite Raypak being number 2. For pumps once again it's 90% Whisperflows another Pentair product extremely quiet and powerful currently I'm looking into the new intelliflow pumps.

I agree with everything said, with one small addition flagstones and limestone dissolve/chip period salt system or not. At least here in the SoCal area. I have no idea why they're getting so popular around pools. I also wouldn't waste my time with ozone unless I had a lightly used covered pool with an oversized ozone system, contact chamber the works.