It takes a few minutes for my tankless water heater to warm up, so we end up wasting a lot of water in our shower. Is there a way to avoid this? A friend mentioned a “comfort valve” or something? What is it and how does it work? Or is there another solution? Thx!
With a tankless heater, there’s nothing to warm up. Hot water is basically instant when it comes out.
How far is your shower from the heater? Usually, long times to first heat are because you have to go through all the cold water sitting in the line before the hot water reaches you.
Yes, that. That’s a better explanation of the problem. Thanks. The shower is way on the other side of the house and up a floor.
They make instant recirculation pumps that cycle the water through the tankless in a loop and stop when the hot water gets back to the pump. We have one. If you don’t already have the return pipes for it, you’d need some additional plumbing work. (Either way, it should be professionally installed).
It’s the same system you’d have for a tank, but it can’t run all the time, or it burns up the heater. You have to trigger it. They make flow switches, but mine (new construction) was cheesed. I just set up a zigbee switch with a 1 minute timer to trigger the pump.
I know it feels wasteful, but it’s a couple of pennies worth of water.
A couple of tricks I’ve seen in the zero waste forums is saving that water in a bucket and watering plants or flushing toilets with it.
Everyone is mentioning recirculation systems which will solve your problem. Just keep in mind that if you are constantly circulating the water through your heater, you will also be constantly heating the water. So you will stop wasting water and start wasting heat instead. It won’t be a huge amount and you may live somewhere you need to heat your house anyway.