Split System Installation Without the Runaround.
The split system is the default architecture of Texas comfort: condenser outside, air handler or furnace-and-coil inside, refrigerant lines between, and ducts carrying the result through the house. Being the default makes it the most commonly botched install in the state, and the most rewarding one to do correctly.
Installation · Burnet & Central Texas
The Standard Setup, Held to a Standard
Split systems dominate for good reasons: the noisy hot half lives outside, the efficiency ceilings are the industry’s best, every service tech alive knows the format, and the architecture adapts to gas furnaces, heat pumps, and straight cooling alike. Familiarity breeds sloppiness, though, and the fleet proves it: linesets run with kinks and mystery lengths, charges topped by feel, matched in name but mismatched in fact, commissioning skipped because the format feels routine. The install being common never makes the physics forgiving, and a split system assembled casually spends fifteen years billing its owner for the shortcuts.
Doing the default right is a checklist we never abbreviate: components selected as an AHRI-matched set rather than warehouse convenience; the lineset sized and routed for the actual run, flushed or replaced rather than inherited blind from the old refrigerant; brazing under nitrogen flow so the lines stay clean inside; evacuation to a verified micron reading rather than a coffee break; the charge weighed in and trimmed to the measured system, not the sticker; and airflow verified against the equipment’s appetite, because the finest matched pair still starves behind a bad duct.
Whether the indoor half is an attic air handler, a closet furnace with a coil, or a horizontal unit in a crawlspace, the format bends to the house, and our commissioning closes it the same way every time: run under load, split measured, pressures and draws recorded, file updated.
There is also a Hill Country layer to this work that out-of-area advice never accounts for. Limestone terrain around Burnet soaks up heat all day and radiates it back through the evening, so equipment here runs longer and later than the same unit would in a milder market. Humidity rolling off Buchanan, LBJ, and the rest of the Highland Lakes chain works on coils, drain lines, and cabinet steel every month of the year. Then winter shows up sideways: a sixty-degree afternoon collapsing into an overnight freeze finds every marginal component in the county at once. Doing split system installation correctly here means doing it for this climate, with parts choices and settings that respect what Central Texas actually does to machinery.
Installation
Split System Install Checkpoints
The steps that decide whether the default architecture performs like the brochure or like the shortcuts.
Same crew, any hour.
The name is the joke, the 24-hour line is not. If this problem cannot wait, call now and the on-call tech picks up, quotes the visit straight, and rolls a stocked truck.
Why Off Duty
Configured for the House, Not the Habit
The split format’s flexibility is worth exploiting deliberately. Cooling-plus-gas-furnace remains the corridor classic where gas is plumbed; heat pump splits win the all-electric math and modern efficiency conversations; dual fuel marries both where the house supports it. Indoor unit placement deserves real thought rather than habit, attic, closet, crawlspace each carry service, drainage, and noise implications we walk through honestly. And the efficiency tier question gets the same treatment as every install here: tiers priced side by side with operating projections for a five-month cooling season, and the recommendation Bryce would give his own family at your budget.
Replacement splits carry one more honesty: the pieces age together, and half-replacements, a new condenser courting an old coil, cost efficiency, capacity, and warranty in exchange for a smaller invoice exactly once. We quote matched, explain the narrow exceptions when they genuinely apply, and document the system’s birth thoroughly enough that its whole service life reads from one file, which is what the default architecture deserves and rarely gets.
Here is how the visit goes. A call to (512) 925-3090 reaches a real tech, not a call center, at any hour. On site, the diagnosis runs on instruments until the cause is certain, and then everything gets laid out in plain English: what failed, what fixes it, and exactly what it costs, before work begins. When the split system installation work is done, it gets verified under load instead of switched on and waved at. If the pattern sounds simple, it is. It is also rare enough in this trade that people write reviews about it.
A straight word on money. We do not print teaser prices on this website and we do not do surprise math on invoices. Call, describe the problem, and we will tell you what the visit costs before a truck rolls. When the diagnosis is in, you get the full repair price out loud, before the work starts, and you decide with the real number in front of you.
A word about waiting it out. Central Texas weather does not leave much grace period, and a system limping in May is a system down in July, when everyone else’s is down too and the schedule is at its tightest. The early call gets the easy appointment and, usually, the smaller invoice. The July call gets the queue. Texas rewards the prepared, and so does our schedule.
You will also know exactly who is in your house. This company runs on one standard because it mostly runs on one set of hands: Bryce, second-generation in the trade, with every credential on the about page and every kind of job photographed in the gallery. Small shop, short chain of accountability, no strangers in rotation.
We run this work all over the map: Burnet and the Highland Lakes first, then the whole hundred-mile circle, Marble Falls, Georgetown, Round Rock, Austin, Killeen, and out to Waco and Boerne. The full sixteen-county roster is on the service areas page. Wherever you sit on it, the same truck standard applies: the same tech, the same instruments, the same price-before-work rule, whether the drive took ten minutes or ninety. Distance changes the arrival window, never the workmanship.
Diamond Contractor
Mitsubishi’s top ductless credential, earned with factory training.
Second Generation
Raised in the trade, ten years on the tools before the name went on a truck.
Warranty Authorized
JB and Mitsubishi warranty work: we file the claim, you skip the fight.
Open 24 Hours
A real person answers the phone at any hour, every day of the year.
The Standard
How This Work Gets Done Here
Here is the standard this work gets held to, spelled out. First, no guessing: the cause is proven with gauges, meters, and eyes on the actual equipment before a single part is recommended. Second, no padding: the fix that goes on the quote is the fix the system needs, sized and specced properly, with no mystery add-ons riding along. Third, no shortcuts: torque specs, code clearances, and manufacturer procedure all get followed even where nobody will ever look, because that is precisely where corners usually get cut.
And when it is done, it gets proven. Systems get run under real load, temperatures and pressures get checked against spec, and the numbers get recorded so the next visit starts from data instead of memory. You get the plain-English version of what was done and why, the workspace gets cleaned, and the price on the invoice is the price you heard before the work began. Hold us to all of it. Our neighbors in the reviews already do.
Split System Installation Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
The ones the phone line hears most for this service, with the answers given at full length instead of sales-brochure length.
What exactly is a split system versus everything else?
The two-piece architecture: an outdoor unit holding the compressor and condenser coil, an indoor unit holding the evaporator coil and blower, in an air handler or atop a furnace, and insulated refrigerant lines connecting them, with ducts distributing the conditioned air. Alternatives include package units, everything in one outdoor cabinet, and ductless systems, indoor heads without ductwork. Splits are the Texas default because the format fits most houses, hits the best efficiency ratings, and services conveniently. If your house has an outdoor unit and an attic or closet unit, you own a split.
Why does matching the indoor and outdoor units matter so much?
Because the two halves are one refrigeration circuit engineered together: capacity, efficiency, and refrigerant metering are all rated as a pair, and AHRI certificates exist precisely to document legitimate marriages. Mismatches lose rated capacity, run wrong pressures that stress the compressor, and typically void manufacturer coverage, invisible costs that surface as August disappointment and denied claims. Modern refrigerant transitions harden the rule further. Our quotes name the matched combination and its certificate number, which is a sentence worth requesting from any bidder before signing anything.
Should my new split system be a heat pump or AC with a furnace?
The house usually answers. Existing gas service and a decent furnace: cooling-side replacement pairs naturally, and the dual fuel upgrade, heat pump instead of straight AC, adds cheap electric heating for the mild ninety percent of winter at modest premium. All-electric houses: the heat pump split wins nearly outright over strip-heat alternatives. Furnace and AC both elderly: the full comparison deserves daylight, and we price both paths with operating projections. Rates, equipment ages, and your freeze-season preferences all vote, and the arithmetic gets shown rather than asserted.
How long does a split system install take?
The standard residential swap runs a focused single day: morning removal, midday setting and connection craft, afternoon vacuum, charge, and commissioning. Honest stretchers: duct corrections, electrical upgrades, difficult attic or crawlspace logistics, and first-time installs with new linesets, which get quoted as the two-day projects they are. The invariable part is the closing hours of verification, the vacuum reading, the weighed charge, the measured split, because a split system commissioned properly starts a fifteen-year service life, and one waved into operation starts a service relationship of a different kind.
Is the lineset reused when replacing a split system?
Sometimes legitimately, never automatically. Reuse requires the existing lines to be correctly sized for the new equipment, physically sound, routed acceptably, and flushed to remove the old system’s oil residues, mineral and ester oils do not cohabitate across refrigerant generations. Buried, kinked, undersized, or contaminated linesets get replaced, and the quote says which path yours takes and why. The cut-rate special, new equipment on unexamined old lines, saves an hour and gambles the compressor. Ours get inspected, decided honestly, and documented either way.
The Default, Done to Spec
Matched components, clean refrigerant craft, and commissioning numbers you keep. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
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