Comment by cucumber3732842

Everywhere in the country they have basements a huge fraction of them are unheated and probably hover around 38, 40, 35deg in the winter. You dump cold air into that and some % of pipes are going to freeze. And we're talking about a much bigger energy amount, water having high specific heat after all so it is a lot of "cold" being dumped in.

Now, this is of course no concern in the "my water heater is in my attic or attached garage" parts of the country such regulations come from...