When you were watering every other day, how long were you watering for?

If you have trees, don't use that weed n feed stuff. Will harm trees if used all the time.

How long do you water? To keep things in perspective...

I use a sprinkler that covers 400 sqft. It puts out 4-5 gallons a minute or 240-300 gallons of water per hour. You've probably heard that one inch of water is needed so that translate to 600 gallons of water per 1000 sqft. I water for an hour then move the sprinkler to next area. It probably took 10 hours to completely water my lawn. Thankfully, I use 2 sprinklers that cuts down time in half.

My point is that nearly everyone has no idea just how much water is really needed to thoroughly saturate the ground 6-8 inches depth.

I live on rocks and I water every 7 to 14 days in the summer depending on how hot it gets. If it goes over 100*F, usually every 7 days.

My mom's in Houston never gets watered. Why? because the soil is in great shape. Full of earthworms. No pesticide of any kind. Some of pesticide are very toxic to earthworms. The grass rarely ever dies even during drought....

I think you may need to look a little further than an inch of water a week, or the amount of earthworms in your soil. I now NOTHING about SA short of it being succeptible to pests and disease. I would start by checking the soil next to the driveway for construction debris or impaction. Does the water just run off the surface or does it saturate the soil? Then move on to fungus/disease, etc. Your concrete driveway may also be leaching into the soil there, or you may have run-off from car washes, etc. It could be many things. You will get it eventually...... Or just import more earthworms.

Well I suggest folks look at your pictures, because there is some good clues.

What I notice is from your pictures you drive way slopes to a valley to your neighbors yard, and your neighbors drive way is a mirror image. So it looks like a valley between your two properties. The only difference is you have a problem and your neighbor does not.

That tells me you either have a watering issue or a toxin problem originating from your drive way. My guess is it is water improperly compounded by the slope. At any rate the grass next to your drive way is dead, and Saint Augustine unlike Bermuda does not come back, it is just dead.

I am struggling with brown patches in st augustine as well. My patches are different from yours but thought that I might be able to help because I have been doing lots of research into st augustine problems.

There is something that would help to define the nature of your problem, not sure if you have tried this yet.

Buy a moisture meter from a nursery and see if you can even get it into the soil where your grass is brown. My guess is that the soil will be so compacted that you can't. My other guess would be that when you plug the moisture meter into the neighbor's green grass at the bottom of the slope, it will insert easily and read "wet".

If this is the case, I would core aerate your area, which will allow water to penetrate to the 6" level instead of running off to the neighbor's grass. This will encourage a deeper root structure and better drought tolerance.
Wishing you best success.

Thanks for the help guys. I can't tell you how hard I work on my lawn and take pride in making sure it looks great. I've been living in the home for 2 years (first home) and have never had the problem until we started getting drought conditions this summer. I've started noticing more yellowing and dead grass in other areas and it just makes me sick...

Our lot size is relatively small (50X100) and we have a 4 zone system. I have been watering each zone for 25-30 minutes in the evenings about every 3 days or so.

How is aerating done? Should I call a company like Chem Lawn for help?

For a small area like the patch next to your driveway, you could easily aerate yourself if you buy a 6" core aerating tool from a nursery. I do a 600 sq ft lawn with a two core tool made by Yard Butler that cost about $25, and you step on it like a shovel to penetrate the ground. It will certainly help your problem even if it does not cure it.

It looks like classic water shortage to me. Your lot is properly graded to slope to a swale between the lots and then out to the street. You can test this theory with a soaker hose placed about 3 inches away from the concrete. Your situation will be worse if your slope faces south. That would help explain why your neighbor's north facing slope would look much greener. Out of curiosity is the neighbor's truck always parked there?

Forget about Trugreen. Do a search and see what others have experienced. If you can do it yourself, do it. Trugreen definitely won't help you with watering issues.

You can resod any time you want. I would not wait until spring.

Here are your pictures

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Soaker hose works best. I use it all the time for the grass strip between sidewalk and street and strip area between house. I barely turn it on where you have little trickling flow out of the faucet and just leave soaker hose there all night long.

Only 30 minutes per zone? That's all? I use a sprinkler that covers 400 sqft and I find that i need an hour to put out an inch of water. 4-5 gallons a min so that's 240-300 gallons per hour. It takes 600 gallons per 1000 thousand to saturate ground 6-8 inches deep. So it takes 8 total hours to water my little lot.

I too have a slope in my front/side yard, much more severe. Rain just runs off. So I use the soaker hose for a day, then use my aerator tool. If it really looks desperate, I will also spread compost after aeration. This method really helps.

I have the same sort of issue with the sloping side yard. The best option is using a soaker hose so the water can actually soak in. I have an automatic sprinkler system that came with the house that I never use. I usually use either a soaker hose or a cheap 2$ sprinkler from HD. I can go about a week before the grass starts wilting if I don't get rain.

FWIW, I also cut high, use organic fertilizer and don't use pesticides.