Can you lay sod on top of a dead lawn?

The question from a huge amount of home owners about sod installation is can I lay my sod on top of my old dead lawn.
The one clear answer you should be hearing from any professional farmer or landscaper is No! Never in fact and here is why.

Grass needs the proper conditions like any plant for a healthy lawn. When Sod dies it does not completely break down, what you will have left instead is a mixture of sand, silt, clay that is depleted of nutrients along with the dead roots. A new lawn placed on top of this thick man made depleted layer of soil will survive on its current nutrients and while trying to root through this dead space between fresh soil and your ground many roots will either suffer or instead just turn back around to the fresh soil it loved growing on. 

In the past people got away with this because first the sod was local meaning your soil was the same and not manufactured. The second large factor being as you can see lawns are all mounded and not flat like in the past. That’s because people through the years have continually just piled deadline on top of deadline when buying or selling homes. That means there’s not one layer in my experience in tearing out lawns if it’s mounded it’s more like four or five lawns they have just been stacked on top of each other.

A great example of this is moving into a new home in finding that the sprinkler heads are much lower than the lawn area. If your sprinklers are having a problem hitting the center of the lawn because it’s elevated that was not an original plan or design that means that there’s layers and layers of depleted dead soil that have been compacted on each other not the fresh soil you would get from tearing all that out.

We always recommend you cut out as much of that as you can and be sure to Till end topsoil compost mix to an average of at least 1 yard per every 200 ft.². Isabella nutrients should give your lawn a healthy start or giving enough nutrients to establish a deep rooted system.All is well you can roll before the installation as well as watering and rolling the area after.