I did the same last year and noticed the same: time to get hot water at the extremities seems the same because the pipes are cole after a long period of time no matter what.

What I haven't got a feeling for is whether it's quicker to get hot water after the pipe has been heated recently. We just don't have water usage that would benefit from that, yet. I think/hope that in that use case the performance will be a bit better.

The alternative that I view is having some kind of recirculation system, but I don't know how to calculate the benefits of that. It seems like a lot of energy could be wasted if things don't exactly fit the schedule of the recirculation system.

I did the same last year and noticed the same: time to get hot water at the extremities seems the same because the pipes are cold after a long period of time no matter what.

What I haven't got a feeling for is whether it's quicker to get hot water after the pipe has been heated recently. We just don't have water usage that would benefit from that, yet. I think/hope that in that use case the performance will be a bit better.

The alternative that I view is having some kind of recirculation system, but I don't know how to calculate the benefits of that. It seems like a lot of energy could be wasted if things don't exactly fit the schedule of the recirculation system.