Ok, wow. I mean WOW! You're getting the wrong advice on every front. St Aug would THRIVE in that shade. The grass died because they didn't water it. Actually it might have died the first time from a disease left to run out of control, but in any case, the solution now is new sod (NOT SEED) and water. That cheap builder grade bermuda is only one notch below the very best bermuda grass you can buy at any price. The reason it is cheap and "builder grade" is that it is easy to grow and every grower in Texas grows it. The supply of that stuff is inexhaustible, but you cannot get a better turf grass without paying through the nose. The name of it is TIF 419 or TifTurf, or something like that. It has been around for 40 years or more and is very popular. The more expensive TIF varieties are only used in professional sports stadiums. I should note that ALL seeded varieties of bermuda are basically common bermuda, not the TIF hybrid. Thus if you start with a TIF lawn, you should never reseed bermuda into it. The common bermuda looks like a weed in a hybrid turf. Here is a picture of common bermuda invading a TIF turf. Note the common is bluer in color, coarser, and has a different growth habit. It's a mess once you have them mingled. If you have already seeded with common bermuda, I would not attempt to install a hybrid (sod) lawn without a lot of prep to kill the common. June is the time to take on that project. Whatever you do, do not fall into the trap of watching all the golf TV where they are urging you to get out and do something to the lawn. Bermuda needs hot soil to do much of anything to it. The reason your neighborhood lawns might look cheap is because they don't know how to care for them. Bermuda needs a LOT of maintenance to keep it nice. It should be mowed to about 1 inch high, 2x per week and 3x per week during the spring flush of new growth. It also needs heavy fertilizer applied monthly all season long. Most people are unwilling to do what it takes to make bermuda look great. Having said all that, I still prefer a St Aug lawn if you can keep it watered. All lawns need exactly the same amount of water to keep them looking nice through the summer. That amount is one inch per week, applied all at one time. The problem with St Aug is if you fail to water it for 3-5 weeks, it can die on you. Other grasses will go dormant first, but St Aug just dies. That's what happened in your yard. Bermuda would never grow in your shade, but St Aug should do fine. In fact, St Aug will take over your yard even if you have bermuda now. You would have to keep the St Aug mowed at the mower's highest setting and allow it to invade the bermuda. Bermuda cannot invade into tall St Aug because the tall St Aug provides too much shade for bermuda. But if you mow the grass at the lowest setting, then the bermuda can invade just fine and will give you a mess. Absolutely DO NOT rototill the soil in prep for a lawn. You might want to rototill for a vegie garden but never for a lawn. The tilled soil will take 3 years to settle, and it will settle unevenly. There is hardly anything worse than mowing a bumpy lawn.

Tilling would have been the wrong thing to do, especially for bermuda, so don't hate on your installer. He did it right. Still the surface is not level. You can deal with that in December or wait until next June. The grass either needs to be completely dormant or growing like crazy. Your soil is not likely to be compacted. You can drive bulldozers over it all day long and it will not compact...unless the soil is saturated with water first. If the soil was saturated and then mechanically compressed, that would cause the particles of soil to squeeze the air out and that is the definition of compacted soil. Bricks are made of compacted clay. Adobe is made of compacted silt and sand. Almost no yards are truly compacted. However, many (MANY) yards are hard from a lack of adequate biology. New yards are especially prone to this because they don't get watered, fertilized with organics, and don't have a history of grass growing in them. Here's how to fix yours fast. ...and when I say fast, I mean in 3 weeks. Spray it with shampoo. Shampoo is a surfactant that will allow moisture to penetrate much deeper into the soil. When that happens the microbes in the soil have a more hospitable environment (cooler and moister) in which to thrive. It is the microbes that soften the soil for you. The shampoo application rate is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. If you have 3,000 square feet, put 9 ounces into a hose end sprayer, fill it with water, and try to spray it evenly until the sprayer bottle is empty. You can repeat this as often as you want to, but wait for 3 weeks before you decide to repeat. Before you spray it test the soil by pushing a screw driver into it. Do that before you water and after. Then spray the yard and apply a full 1/2 to 1 inch of water all at one time. You'll have to time how long to leave the sprinkler on yourself. Do that by placing cat food or tuna cans around the yard and time how long it takes to fill them. I can tell by looking at your (dry) yard that 25 minutes is not nearly long enough. Mine takes 8 hours with turbo oscillator sprinklers on a 3/4-inch hose. That time to water 1 inch is the time you should reset your sprinklers for. Once you know that number, reset the timer and set it to water only one day per week. Bermuda in Fresno should be able to handle one day a week watering easily. I just visited a St Augustine lawn in Phoenix that only gets water once a week, so you can do it with bermuda. When the soil is right it will be very soft when moist and very firm when dry. The shampoo treatment is a replacement for aerating. You won't have to aerate ever again. Use a clear shampoo like baby shampoo. Don't use one with conditioners in it. Cheapo shampoo is fine. Generally you are correct to use the highest nitrogen number you can get easily with zeros for the other numbers. You might want to spend $25 for a soil test at Logan Labs to see if you need P or K in your fertilizer. If you do that, post your results here on this forum. Morpheuspa will read it for you and tell you how much of anything you need to apply, when to apply, and where to buy it. In addition to monthly feeding with high N, I would urge you to add at least one app per year of any organic fertilizer. The organic fertilizers feed the soil microbes so that they can help you take care of the grass. For example they keep the soil from getting hard. They also feed the grass, and there are other benefits. You can apply organics at the same time you use chemical ferts, or any other day of the year. Have you tried mowing down to 1/2-inch and letting it come back up to 3/4? Do you actually hit the ground when you mow lower than 1 inch or does it just scalp off all the green and leave brown stems? Brown stems are normal until you get it down to the 1/2-inch range. If you mow it 3x per week at 1/2-inch it will start to grow horizontally like you see on putting greens at the golf course. That's often the objective for serious bermuda growers.

Another little update and another question: Yard is greening up nicely. Section F1 is trailing far behind B1, but I'm not concerned at this point. Since I last checked in I've continued with the plan and added a 24-25-4 starter fertilizer. I supplemented that with Milorganite at 1/2 label rate. Next up in the soil plan is the epsom salt and potassium sulfate this weekend. I *could* put that down, but I'll be aerating in 2 weeks though,at the same time as my next starter fertilizer and Milo application. So if I wait and apply the epsom salt, the potassium sulfate, and the fertilizers at the same time, they'll have the benefit of deeper soil access. Should I worry about applying those at the same time though? Is there the potential to burn the grass?

I did roll the sod after laying it. That's good for the sod, but if you were thinking that would help with the leveling, it's still going to settle for 3 years. I see the low spot fairly well. When you fill that with sand, if you want a faster recovery, be sure to use a broom or rake to lift the grass blades up through the sand. I've seen hybrid bermuda lawns smothered and not recover for 2 years after covering with ... compost! Nobody would predict that, but it was right around the corner from me. They've since converted to St Augustine. Dry edges on a roll of sod is not unusual. It will recover.