I'm an engineer by schooling, and enjoyed chemistry at one time. My beermaking and saltwater aquarium hobbies requires certain tools, let's call them "toys", that can also be useful for larger bodies of water. But "Purposeful low pH and Alk"? Ha! Double Ha! ...
Other than kicking up the Cl level every night, "shocking" every week and keeping some residual agaecide, I'm not sure I know what to shoot for!! I haven't figured out how much Borax to add, for instance, to raise pH a certain number of points. BleachCal262 doesn't perform pH calculations based on added Borax. (I tried asking the author, but his email address bounced.) The program suggests attaining 50 ppm of Sodium Tetraborate Decahydrate, not for pH control, but for use as an algacide. Why 50 ppm? I also haven't yet received the instructions with the test kit (whether they cover these questions or not, I don't know), so I'm not sure what to do.

I don't yet use CYA because of what I originally read in the PoolSolutions' site, and until I got Ben's kit I had no comfortable way of testing for it. Since I was adding some Cl on a nightly basis, what I'd lose to daytime UV radiation didn't bother me. How much of my Cl will adding CYA keep me from losing during daytime, at my low levels?

And abt. PolyQuat, well I have almost 2 quarts of Algaecide left, it appears to work much better than the copper-based chemical junk my pool dealer originally sold us and I haven't found a reasonably priced source of Poly, yet. Any ideas on sources?

Keep in mind that our well water has certain properties that make controlling some chemistries difficult. I found this out the very hard way with my aquarium; and it also explains some brewing problems I've encountered.

BTW, I just re-read Ben's high pH article: http://www.poolsolutions.com/gd/hiphpool.html I'm really interested in finding out what Ben was referring to with his comment abt. a "...method of shocking that produces greatly improved results in many cases. In conjunction with high pH pool operation..." Who do I pay for that information?

Maybe I'll get most of my questions answered there, once I can get my pH stabilized above 7.6?
We'll see. Thx for your comments!