Taking control of my pool this year

[kelemvor]

Also, I read I should turn off the salt cell for an hour when adding anything to the pool, including salt, is this good practice?

You definitely need to turn the cell off when adding salt. I've never turned off mine when adding bleach or acid, and other than some polyquat about 6 months ago those are the only things I put in my pool.

The reason for turning it off is that adding salt increases the conductivity in the water, and until it's fully dissolved it can increase conductivity enough to cause the cell to draw significantly more current which could damage the cell or your control board/transformer.