Generally I know a lot about SoCal climate and soils, but I've never had any experience north of I-10 up the 405 beyond the coastal range. I suspect, because there is a coastal range, that you are not influenced by the sea breezes like they are on the coastal side of the hills. You're a bit dryer and warmer (am I correct?). With that in mind there are a few grass types you should not attempt to grow. Those are the fescues, like the ever popular SoCal favorite, Marathon, and Kentucky bluegrass. You should stick with the more drought friendly grasses like bermuda and St Augustine. If your back yard has full sun all day, then either one is fine. If you have fewer than 6 hours of FULL sun in the summer, then bermuda is not going to be a happy experience.

Either of these two grasses will need 1 inch of water every now and then* to remain nice in the summer. If you go on vacation and find out that your sprinkler broke 3 weeks ago, then a St Augustine lawn might die on you, but a bermuda lawn will not die from lack of water. In that sense it is often said that bermuda is a more drought tolerant grass. But as I said, if you want the grass to look nice, any grass will need periodic watering.

*The watering mantra is deep and infrequent. Deep means 1 inch of water all at one time. Infrequent depends on your air temperature. Here's the guide: With temps above 90 degrees F, water deeply once per week. With temps in the 80s, water deeply once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, water once every 3 weeks. The rest of the year water once a month. This does not take rain into consideration. If you get some rain, then watch the grass for signs of wilting and then water deeply and get back on the frequency based on temperature. You can measure how long it takes YOUR sprinkler system to deliver 1 inch by placing several cat food or tuna cans around the yard. Turn the sprinkler on and time how long it takes to fill them. That will be your watering time from now on. Mine take 8 full hours with my water pressure and my hose and sprinkler. My neighbor's high flow system only takes 20 minutes - but an inch is an inch no matter how long it takes to get it down. 1 inch of water over 1,000 square feet is 625 gallons. For perspective a typical swimming pool holds about 35,000 gallons.

Truly compacted soil is almost impossible to achieve for a home owner unless you are playing football on completely saturated soil. Usually people have hard soil, but not truly compacted. A way the professionals have found to loosen hard soil is to spray it with an expensive surfactant. What we have found useful is to spray any clear shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. So if you have 2,000 square feet of grass, put 6 ounces of shampoo into a hose-end sprayer, fill the rest of the bottle with water, and spray evenly over the yard at a medium rate until the bottle is empty. Follow that up with 1/2 to 1 inch of irrigation and wait 3 weeks. After that your soil should become very soft when it is moist. It will become very hard again, though, until you irrigate, so be aware of that. I sprayed mine back in 2012 and have not had to spray it again since. If you want it softer you can repeat spraying every 3 weeks, forever. If you make a mistake and spray it too strong, don't worry. Shampoo does not seem to have any ill effects at almost any rate. Use a clear shampoo like baby shampoo - something you can see through.

Think about the grass choices and pick something. We can help you get it established without too much hassle. Hybrid bermuda and St Augustine comes as a sod. The bermuda will be less expensive. If that is still too expensive (rental), then you can buy bermuda seed for much less. If you go with seed you should not put the seed down until June. Bermuda seed needs very warm soil to germinate.

There is a process to go through to get your yard ready for sod or seed. Before you do anything, know that rototilling is NOT the way to prep the soil. Anything you need to do can be done from the top. Basic prep is to kill all the weeds (twice), put the seed or sod down, roll it with a roller, and water. There's a little more detail I could add, but that will give you an idea of what you're in for. After you decide what to put down we can get more specific.

If you want to get a soil test (optional), get the $25 test from Logan Labs in Ohio. They have an excellent test process and if you post the results here, morpheuspa will read the test and tell you what to apply, when, how much, how often, and where to buy it.