There is no northern grass that you can keep alive in full NJ sun for 3 weeks with no water. About your only realistic option, afaik, is to go with KBG. You can let it go dormant in the summer. It won't look great, but will come back to life in the fall. I think you can keep it alive with only 1/4 inch water every two weeks. Of course this year my KBG is thriving like spring with all the rain. I think I only irrigated 2 or 3 times this year. Between rain every so often and the occasional irrigation I think you should be able to keep KBG pretty much green through the summer.

What lawn do you have now? Maybe you are over watering it. A few times a week sounds like overkill. Better to water once a week and put down a full inch. Or, water 1/2 in in the summer months maybe 4 days or so apart. You have to experiment a little. The idea is to go as long as you can before you stress the grass.

I inherited the lawn. It seems to be a mix of everything. Mostly some sort of fescue I have patches of grass that are clearly different color and texture. This is another reason for the overseed. Does KBG squeeze out the old grass or would I need to kill it?

Can you post some pics? I've seeded KBG on bare ground but never tried to overseed with it. I've read on this forum that KBG doesn't overseed well. Depending on your situation simply making the lawn healthy might fix most of your problems, or it might not. The more pics the better. Maybe some close ups, too.

How large an area are we talking about?

Here in the PNW we also use cool season turf grass blends and drought tolerance is a pretty key component. We are very dry in summer, usually getting not much more than 1/2 inch of rainfall - if that - from the end of June through the end of September. Unless on a well, water costs here are high.....and often come with restrictions during the summer months. Many just let their lawns go dormant - they always come back strong with fall rains and cooler temps.

But if you do not like the sere, brown look of a summer dormant lawn, try overseeding with a tall fescue. It is probably the most drought tolerant of the northern cool season grasses. However, it will still require irrigation to prevent or limit summer dormancy. And increasing the duration of any irrigation but decreasing the frequency will encourage deeper root penetration and increased drought tolerance - water deeply but not very often :-)

I just think you may be putting the cart before the horse by starting over. I just don't think there is another grass that will accomplish what you want. I'm in NJ also and those pictures show a very small patch of grass. Is the $200 a quarterly bill for last summer? We've had an enormous amount of rain this summer and you shouldn't have used practically any water this year. It looks to me like you might have a significant fungal outbreak, possibly from the heat and too much rain. It is amazing how nice a lawn can become if you do the right things. For instance, the patches of grass that look different from the rest might simply be poa annua, which is an annual KBG that is considered a weed.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do the lawn over, especially with the small size, I'm saying you might not need to be spending so much $$$ on the lawn you have. If you have time you should take some close up pics on a cloudy day like today. Get within 3 or 4 inches of the grass. Take a photo at the transition between a dead patch and living, green grass. We're trying to see what the grass in the transition zone looks like. If it has fungal lesions then that may need to be addressed.

Nice property, BTW!

@Jim Mac: Thanks for the pics. Let me give you some tough love. You say your lawn does not look bad but I can tell you it has serious problems. I don't see many lesions but that thick matted brown area is a symptom of fungal diseases like summer patch. It is caused by too much water and heat. You said you water a lot but "still" have burned patches. Those patches are not from drying out. It may well be from over watering. If you are in NJ when did you find a dry day to water the lawn? I'm in northern NJ and we've had buckets of rain about every few days for much of the summer.

What exactly is your watering schedule. You have an irrigation system? Have you ever measured how much water your are putting down with tuna cans, or by reading the water meter? I'm curious about the $200 water bill. I pay 0.55 cents per gallon for water and I have to think you can't be far off from that. In your photo plus maybe the shaded area you might have 1000 sf??? If you watered one inch of water that would cost about $3.50 per watering. If you watered every week for 13 straight weeks that amounts to under $50 for the entire summer. Either your pool is using more water than you think or you are far over watering your lawn. Maybe you could provide more feedback on that before we go any further.

Here are two sections of my lawn from today. One is KBG sod and the other is a standard landscaper's mix of rye, fescue and KBG, which is probably what you have. You can see that they look almost the same. My point is that the mix of grass can be a good thing and it looks very nice when healthy.

I dont mind the tough love - thats why I came here. The areas where it is browning out is an area that gets the least amount of water. I have this section of the yard on a sprinkler system that I turn on when I feel the lawn needs it. Your right that August has had lots of rain, but July was very dry in my part of the state.

I want a lawn like yours!! I have always struggled with this section of my property. I have friends with Zoysia grass and they love it. I am thinking of putting down zoysia plugs in the spring. I dont mind the winter look of zoysia in the backyard, it wont be an issue.

Is there something I should do about the fungus? Or just let it ride out through the summer/fall.

Can we get back to the water? I'm having trouble understanding how you are spending so much on water. If the cost of watering is precipitating (pun intended) your interest in a different kind of lawn, it would be a good idea to fully understand how you are spending so much on watering the lawn. How frequently do you water? How long? Have you ever put tuna cans on the lawn to see how much accumulates? Every irrigation system is different and they can put down vastly different amounts of water in a given time period. You need to get a handle on this before moving ahead.

Agree with Daniel. Back in July, how often did you water and for how long? Did you water at all through the rainy month? Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering, so back in July you should have watered deeply about 4 times.

Did we scare Jim off?