@azdavidr, thanks for putting the hours into create this great and very useful guide. Really great job!
Same here, everyone told me clay clay clay, so I before you started the soil subject I never doubted local knowledge… only to find that my house sits on 3 different soil types! Below is the overview (golf course) and the zoomed in picture, my location circled.
The good news is all is sandy loam of some kind with both light blues in the backyard at an AW 0.16, the red front yard at an AW 0.11. For comparison (only on the overview chart) the dark blue around me is AW 0.19 often flooded), and the amber AW 0.13, all sandy loams. I have not yet done a personal soil analysis as you suggested before :(.
@Modawg2k, I suspect I am in the same situation as you are: the yard soil feels a lot more sandy (as my gardening wife confirms) than the soil under the lawn. To make things more complicated, the banks on two sides of the house have a plastic perforated liner on them to reduce erosion. However (less when smart cycling) with a good rainfall, the lawn close to the bank often turns into a swamp, since rainfall doesn’t come with smart cycle around here ;). As the season went along, I kept reducing the amount of watering the area near the bank, which in turn dries out the central portion with the most sun exposure. Can’t win this one without redesigning the irrigation layout - and I am not up for this yet.
my question is how much of an AW difference do you generally allow for sod on a sandy loam base?
Ok, in summary and barring a big AW difference, I plan to switch to 0.11 (red, front) and 0.16 (blue, back), banks set to clay and 0.09 (to account for liner). Makes sense to you guys? Feels a bit over-engineered, but what the heck, since we have the parameters to play with.
Again, thanks for all the terrific advice on this forum. Makes sprinkling actually fun…