The Guest Room That Sits Empty Eleven Months of the Year
Most houses along I-35 have one. The back bedroom, the room over the garage, the converted bonus space at the end of the hall. It hosts family at Thanksgiving, a graduation weekend in Belton, a soldier's parents in from out of state for a Fort Hood ceremony, and then it goes quiet again until the next holiday. The rest of the year you are either paying to condition an empty room or you are closing the vents and letting it turn into a hot box that smells like a closed closet.
A ductless mini split solves that room on its own terms. It runs when someone is in there and it sits at idle when nobody is. Old West Minisplits installs them at a posted flat price: $2,000 for one zone, $3,700 for two zones, $5,400 for three zones. Four or more zones get quoted individually. The price is on the page before we ever see your house, so there is no standoff at the kitchen table.
Why Closing the Vents Was Never the Answer
The common fix for an unused guest room is to shut the registers and close the door. That does not save what people think it saves. Your central system was balanced for every register being open, and choking off a branch raises static pressure in the duct system, which the blower pays for. Meanwhile the room itself drifts.
In Central Texas that drift goes one direction most of the year. A sealed room with an exterior wall and an attic above it gets hot and it gets humid, and humidity with no air movement is how you end up with that musty smell guests are too polite to mention. A mini split keeps the room on its own thermostat at a low setback, moves air over the coil, and comes up to comfortable in minutes when the guests arrive.
On-Demand Comfort, Set From Your Phone or the Handheld Remote
This is the whole argument for a guest suite. Park the head unit at a mild holding setpoint while the room is empty, then bring it to whatever your mother-in-law considers civilized the morning she lands. Inverter compressors ramp instead of slamming on and off, so recovery is quick and the room does not overshoot and then swing back.
The other thing guests notice is the quiet. A wall head on low fan is a soft, steady sound, not the whump of a central blower kicking on at two in the morning down the hall. And because the guest room has its own control, nobody has to negotiate the hallway thermostat with the rest of the household at 68 degrees while everyone else is comfortable at 74.
One Zone or Two, and What the Flat Price Covers
A single guest bedroom is almost always a one zone job at $2,000. If the suite includes an attached sitting area or a second bedroom that closes off behind its own door, that is two zones at $3,700, because a door between two spaces means a head unit on each side of it. Two guest rooms plus a converted office or craft room is three zones at $5,400. Beyond that we quote individually rather than guess.
The flat price includes the equipment, the labor, the line set, standard electrical, refrigerant, testing, cleanup, and a Home Depot run for touch-up paint where the line set penetrates the wall. No trip fees. No upcharges. Licensed contractors do the work. The honest exceptions, and we say them up front instead of burying them: a very long line set run, an electrical panel upgrade the house already needed before we showed up, or an unusually difficult mounting situation. If one of those applies to your house, you hear it before anything gets scheduled, not after.
How we compare
| Factor | Old West Minisplits mini split | Conditioning it with the central system |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront Cost | $2,000 flat for one zone, posted before we visit. Two zones $3,700, three zones $5,400. | No new equipment cost, but ductless quotes from other Central Texas contractors commonly run $3,000 to $6,000 per zone on a custom quote after an in-home visit. |
| Cost of an empty room | Sits at a mild setback on its own thermostat, drawing almost nothing until someone is in there. | You either condition the empty room along with the whole house or close the vents and raise duct static pressure on the blower. |
| Time to comfortable | Inverter compressor ramps the room up in minutes the morning guests arrive, set from a remote or app. | The room follows the hallway thermostat, so getting it right means dragging the whole house along with it. |
| Winter | Same unit heats. It is a heat pump, so mild Central Texas winters are handled without a furnace running for one occupied room. | Furnace or strip heat runs for the entire house to warm one back bedroom. |
Straight answers
Is the $2,000 flat price really all in for one guest bedroom?
Yes. One zone is $2,000 and that covers equipment, labor, line set, standard electrical, refrigerant, testing, cleanup, and the paint touch-up run. No trip fee, no fuel surcharge, no add-on at the end. The only things that change the number are the exceptions we state up front: a very long line set, a panel upgrade the house already needed, or unusually difficult mounting.
Does the flat price apply if my guest room already has a mini split that quit working?
No. These flat prices are for new installs only. They are not repair pricing and they are not service call pricing. If an existing unit in that room has failed, that is a different kind of work and it is not what the posted numbers cover.
Can one outdoor unit serve the guest room and another room later?
Multi-zone systems do exactly that, and the pricing follows the zone count: two zones $3,700, three zones $5,400, four or more quoted individually. The cleanest path is to tell us now which rooms you eventually want on it, so the system gets specified for that instead of being sized for one head and then outgrown.
Will my electrical panel handle it, and are there rebates?
Standard electrical for the install is included in the flat price. If your panel is already at capacity or was due for an upgrade regardless of us, that is separate work a licensed electrician arranges with you, and we will tell you before scheduling rather than after. On rebates and tax credits, we do not quote dollar figures because they change. Verify current numbers with your utility provider and the IRS. When you are ready for a firm price, use the quote form at /#quote.
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