The other thing that I can't quite get my head around is how the weekly post window works. If I post on the thread every day then according to the formula in the OP:
If you haven't posted in a topic in the last 7 days, posting in it adds 1% of your base bump power to the topic's bump score. Deleted posts count against the 7-day limit, but not the topic's bump score.
it would seem that only the first post will bump it, since every subsequent post that is still in the 36-hour window will have up to 6 previous posts in the 7-day window... so no bump?
That's the way I interpret it, so if you really don't want to bump the thread you can still feel comfortable posting in it without affecting it's bump score for 7 days. Deleting your post and posting again won't add anything to the threads bump score. Since posts are always fixed at 1% of base bumping power it wouldn't help to wait until you've used up your bumping quota for the month.