Ductless mini-split retrofit · Old Palisade & the hill streets · load-calculated, not eyeballed
CENTRAL AIR IS NOT THE ONLY AIR.
Swiftline puts proper heating and cooling into the houses the ductwork never reached — the 1920s palisade homes with plaster walls worth keeping, the attic conversions, the back additions — with slim outdoor compressors and wall heads that whisper. Every quote starts with a room-by-room load calculation, because a mini-split sized by square-foot folklore is just a wall ornament that hums.
Load calculations $120, refunded with any install · single / dual / multi-zone · hyper-heat models rated to −25 °C · one-day installs on most homes · (555) 592-7308
Services
What a retrofit actually looks like
The single-zone rescue
The room that never agreed with the rest of the house — the attic studio, the over-garage bedroom, the sunroom that is a greenhouse in July and a freezer in February. One compressor, one head, one line-set hidden in a soffit or a covered channel, and the room stops being the house’s excuse.
Dual & multi-zone floors
One outdoor compressor driving two, three, four heads — the upper floor of a palisade house, the flat over the shop, the addition the furnace never met. Each room gets its own thermostat and its own load calculation, because the room over the porch and the room in the core share a wall and nothing else.
The whole-house conversion
For homes leaving oil tanks and clunkers behind: hyper-heat systems that carry the January load and shrug off the July one, old radiators or baseboard decommissioned properly, and the refrigerant lines run where the siding can hide them. It is a heating decision, a cooling decision and an inventory decision in one — load-calculated room by room before a bracket is drilled.
Why the tiers are priced by zone, not by room
A zone is a group of rooms one thermostat honestly governs; a room is a wall. Price by the room and every quote becomes a negotiation; price by the zone and the arithmetic is yours to check. The load calculation decides how many zones your house actually is — that is the whole trick, and the only instrument we sell.
Single zone
$4,300installed · single head
- Room-by-room load calculation included
- Line-set hidden in soffit or channel
- Hyper-heat model standard, not an upgrade
- One-day install on most homes
The $120 calc is refunded here.
Two to three zones
$8,900installed · multi-port
- Independent thermostat per zone
- Branch lines balanced to the calc
- Condensate pumped and tested twice
- Old system decommissioned properly
The January load, carried.
Whole house
from $14,600installed · multi-zone
- Every room calculated, every zone named
- Oil tank / clunker decommission quoted flat
- Utility rebate paperwork handled
- Two-year priority service line
Four zones and up, quoted to the calc.
The load calculation is the quote’s spine: room by room, window by window, orientation included — $120, refunded with any install. A company that sizes off square metres alone is selling you a guess with a bracket on it. calc@swiftline.example
How it goes
The one-day install, hour by hour
The day is boring because the preparation was not: lines mapped, brackets pre-drilled to templates, the pad poured the week before. Boring is the product.
Before the day
The calc, the map, the pad
The load calculation names the equipment; the site map names the routes; the pad is poured and cured the week before. The day itself contains no decisions — decisions are what make one-day installs take three.
08:00
Lines & brackets
Line-set routes opened where the map said — a soffit, a closet corner, a covered channel painted to match — and the wall heads mounted to the studs on templates, not to the plaster on hope.
11:00
Set, connect, pressure-test
The compressor lands on its pad, lines are flared, nitrogen-tested at pressure, vacuumed to the micron gauge — the two instruments that decide whether year ten smells like year one.
15:00
Commissioning & the walkthrough
Refrigerant charged to the calculated weight, flows verified at every head, condensate poured down the test jug, and the controls walked through with you. Heat by dinner; the house is yours again.
The wall
Palisade houses, quietly conditioned
Three companies quoted our attic by looking at it from the driveway. Swiftline measured every wall and window, showed us the room-by-room numbers, and installed in a single Tuesday — we had lunch in our own kitchen while they worked. The studio that was unusable in July now holds my office, and January did not make it blink.
They talked us out of the bigger compressor. The load calc said two zones, not three, and the third would have been money spent on bragging rights. It is a strange pleasure to be undersold by a contractor.
The one-day promise was the reason we dared do it with a newborn in the house. They worked like a rehearsal — everything pre-cut, everything mapped — and the heat was on by four. The micron gauge on the table was apparently the whole religion, and it shows.
Our plaster walls were the reason every other company said no or said “furred ceiling everywhere”. Swiftline ran the lines through one closet corner and a painted channel you genuinely cannot find. The 1927 house looks like itself and heats like 2026.
Fair questions
Do mini-splits really heat a whole house here?
The hyper-heat models hold their rated output to −25 °C, and the January two years ago tested them on every street we work. The honest answer lives in the load calculation: it tells us your house’s heat loss at design temperature, and if the arithmetic says a backup is wise we say so in the quote — not in February.
What do the indoor heads look like?
A slim white cassette, roughly the footprint of a letterbox, sited to sweep the long wall rather than blow on the sofa. They sit high, they read quiet, and we place them with you on the site map — the wall is yours; the head goes where you can live with it.
Where does the line-set go in a house with no ducts?
Where the house can hide it: a closet corner, a soffit over a door, a painted channel matched to the wall — mapped before the quote is signed, so “we’ll figure it out when we open the wall” is a sentence you never hear. On most palisade homes one vertical run reaches the whole floor.
How much does the install actually disturb the house?
One day, mostly: a pad poured the week before, one or two wall penetrations sealed properly, drop cloths everywhere, and the house warm by the evening. Multi-zone and whole-house work can take two — the schedule is in the quote, and the schedule is the schedule.
Are rebates and the old-system removal handled?
Utility rebate paperwork is filed by us, in your name, and the numbers land in the quote’s footnote — not as a surprise later. Decommissioning the old oil tank or clunker is quoted flat, done by licensed partners, and the receipts go in the file you keep.
Start with the arithmetic, not the brochure.
The load calculation is $120, refunded with any install, and it is the document every number on this page depends on. Send the rooms; the calc comes back in three working days. calc@swiftline.example · (555) 592-7308
Rebates filed in your name · decommissioning quoted flat · one-day installs on most palisade homes