Help with Patchy dead lawn areas! Reseed?Resod? with PICS

[kenfused]

Hello,
Over the last few months, my lawn has areas that have become somewhat patchy and dry. (I live in the San francisco,CA area). I think some may be due to overzealous dry fertilizer I used in the spring, causing burning of the grass, but I'm not sure what cased this to happen in some areas (low water?)

but, now , how should i fix this?
Should I dig up the dry patches, and add new seed between the green grass?

Or consider chopping out parts of the lawn and placing in new sod?
Any other suggestions??

http://amyandken.com/pics/lawn1.jpg
http://amyandken.com/pics/lawn3.jpg
http://amyandken.com/pics/lawn2.jpg
You can see the problem isn't the entire lawn, but affects 20% or so of it

[huh]

it looks like you may have some compaction issues in those areas

the seed that took did ok, but it cannot spread for some reason

take a screw driver or something and poke around in the good and bad parts to see if any difference

if it is not too compacted some topsoil and fresh seed should do the trick....it looks as though once the grass is going it does ok

also all the dead matter will need to be cleaned out before the soil and seed goes down

if the area is too compact then just till and fresh seed

[kenfused]

Thanks...
Originally I think the prev owner put in sod throughout, so I'm not sure why those areas died out...

[The Rookie]

i was recently in lowes and saw a bag of pellets that were for retaining mostuire in turf. I have thought about aerating and spreading these pellets to help in drought conditions or extreme heat. just a thought