membership upgraded.

I think this page:
http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/lowe...p-by-step.html
will answer many of your questions.

Basically, you just need to keep your pH at 6.8 - 7.0, till your carbonate alkalinity drops to whatever arbitrarily low level you'd like -- 80 ppm?.

Since you've read what's on other sites, and in the pool literature, I probably need to say this: my sites (PoolForum and PoolSolutions) and a now-larger 'offspring' site (TroubleFreePools.com) are the only sources I know that give a correct explanation. I worked this out about 20 years ago, and have since discovered that this process (off-gassing to lower carbonate alkalinity) is well known in the potable and waste water treatment business, and is also understood by some aquarists. But, even after 20 years and 10,000's of successful applications, the pool industry as a whole still embraces the nonsense approaches you've encountered.

You may be understandably skeptical: all I can see is, try it and you'll become yet another data point verifying this approach.