A chinch bug is the insect people name when St. Augustine goes thin in irregular patches in the hottest, driest part of the lawn. The page that owns the limit is thin St. Augustine and chinch bugs. Green Haven is not a spray company. We do not sell a chinch treatment, a weed killer, or a fertilizer round. We mow at the right height, or we replace turf that is actually dead.
The picture associated with them is grass that looks drought-stressed while a nearby zone is still green. A broken irrigation head in the same sunny corner looks the same from the street. So does a lawn that was scalped and then baked. We will not point at a patch from the sidewalk and name the insect as if we had counted it.
What it looks like on a yard
The patches start small. They sit in full sun. If you part the grass and find stolons still crossing the ground, the lawn may be thirsty or too short, not gone. If the soil is bare in those sunny shapes and the stolons are missing, that piece is dead whether an insect did it or the water did. Shade under an oak all day is a different problem. Chinch bugs are unlikely there, and Floratam is the wrong plant anyway.
We see this while we mow. The flag is a thin spot, a dry zone, or a weed flush after a scalp. The flag is not a diagnosis and it is not a chemical ticket. A specialist can identify and treat. If they say the turf is dead, then we replace that piece, not the whole yard by default.
What we do about it
First we put the deck back at 3.5 to 4 inches if the grass is St. Augustine and someone has been scalping it. Weeds in a lawn that still has grass are often a height problem. Second, if the area is sand and weeds, we pull that mat, grade it, and lay new sod. New sod does not kill the next generation of insects, and it does not fix a zone that never runs. Laying grass into the same dry corner is how the new patch matches the old one.
Do not hire us for a spray. Hire us to mow the lawn that is still alive, or to replace the part that is not. The full limit, including what we will not sell, is thin St. Augustine and chinch bugs.