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Originally Posted by RUCdaze
I have to chime in with my two cents. I bought my pre-owned home here in late 2017. I already had a tankless heater. I have to let the water run for about 90 seconds before the hot water comes up. I've asked several professionals what I can do and they all told me there is a way to rig something up that would produce hot water faster, but it's expensive and probably not worth it. I live with the idea of wasting water everytime I need hot water.
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There is no such thing as "instant" hot water unless you have a tankless unit at every faucet in the house (think of the small heaters some people have at the kitchen sink to fill a cup for tea or instant coffee). Wherever a whole-house tankless heater is installed, the water it heats still has to run through the pipes throughout the house to get to the faucets or showers.
If you have a whole-house tankless unit, you can rig a recirculating pump that will give you near-instant hot water throughout the house. You would connect the tankless unit to a holding tank-the best would be a small electric water heater of 10 gal. At the holding tank, you would install a Watts recirculating pump. The Watts pump would move hot water from the holding tank in a continuous loop throughout the house and, when a faucet is opened in the house, the tankless unit would kick on and replenish the water flowing from the holding tank to the faucet.
It will work, but it would be cheaper and easier to replace the tankless unit with a regular water heater and have the Watts pump added to the outlet of the water heater.