Thank you for replying! Very kind of you.

After posting my question I kept reading posts in this forum and found a thread where the advice was to add CYA before continuing to add bleach. But your advice entails adding the CYA at the end. Interesting.

While picking some CYA up at Home Depot tonight, a guy who said he works on pools, stopped and cautioned me that I really should think twice about adding any. Something about it being outlawed as carcinogenic in some states and generally that it's rarely needed. I'll have my water checked at the pool store tomorrow just to verify my own tests. The two tests I've done indicate it's very low.

I really do appreciate your thorough explanation. Sam's Club's Clorox is relatively cheap so I'll try your approach for a few days. I'm curious about what will change to enable the Cl to remain up if I don't add CYA.