First of all, welcome to the forum! Second of all, just to let you know --- I deleted the link to the URL you had so I could mod your post in faster for you.
Looks like you have been doing your homework and doing a lot of reading. Also, if you haven't already done so, go and read at our sister website www.poolsolutions.com.
The answers to your questions are pretty easy ones!
#1. ON. Always have the pump on when adding muriatic acid slowly in front of the return jet.
#2. NO. Instead of using Borax, just aerate the pH back up. Just point the return jet upward to let it make as much bubbling on the pool's surface as possible. Maybe borrow a gang of neighborhood 10 year old boys and tell them to splash away. Get in the pool (when the 10 year old boys go home) with your fiance and splash each other and make waves, etc. Lowering alk is a gradual process. It will take time, but it will work.
#3. You're welcome!
By the way, with a CC reading of 1ppm, that is a sign that you are still fighting something in the water and need to shock the pool back up again. The cloudiness is most likely dead and dying algae. Continue shocking the pool until you can go from sundown one evening until within 2 hours of sunup the next day without losing more than 1ppm of cl overnight. Then, in my opinion, shock for one more day for added insurance. Then let the cl drift down and keep it between 3-6 all the time -- based on the Best Guess table in my signature below which I'm assuming you are already familiar with.
I know you are just using bleach but just want to caution you that I would not use cal-hypo in this pool since your hardness reading is already 275. Vinyl liners don't need calcium. High pH + high calcium hardness + high TA = cloudy water.
Hope this helps. Keep us posted how things are going!
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