The amendment of 30 TAC Chapter 344 effective July 26, 2020 (45 TexReg 4986) made three main changes that turn a right answer from older material into a wrong one. The spill-resistant pressure vacuum breaker (SVB) replaced the atmospheric vacuum breaker (AVB) in 344.50(b), the backflow test report stopped going to the system’s owner under 344.52(c), and head spacing may now run plus or minus 10 percent of the maker’s published radius or spacing under 344.62(b)(1).
The Questions and Answers for Irrigators, TCEQ’s guide to the rules that took effect on January 1, 2009, still lists four answers to a health hazard: an air gap, a reduced pressure principle assembly, a pressure vacuum breaker “or atmospheric vacuum breaker”. The rule in force today, 30 TAC 344.50(b), lists four as well, and the AVB is not one of them.
The date: July 26, 2020
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) adopted the amendment in July 2020. The Secretary of State’s source note under each amended section reads “amended to be effective July 26, 2020, 45 TexReg 4986”, and TCEQ’s own rule compilation, RG-470, dates its Chapter 344 “Updated July 26, 2020”. TCEQ’s quick reference guide to the changes says “Effective July 23rd, 2020” on its cover. This site uses the Texas Register’s date, July 26, 2020.
The amendment touched far more than three rules. The guide walks through it section by section, and it is the record every older document gets checked against. The three below change the most answers.
1. The SVB replaced the AVB
30 TAC 344.50(b)(4) now allows a spill-resistant pressure vacuum breaker (SVB) where the 2009 rule allowed the AVB. The guide gives the reason in one line: AVBs “will not function correctly with a downstream valve” (p. 18). The definition of the AVB was taken out of 344.1 in the same amendment, because, in the guide’s words, “it is no longer a viable form of backflow prevention for irrigation systems” (p. 3).
The SVB came in with two conditions, the same two the pressure vacuum breaker (PVB) carries: no actual or potential back-pressure, and a minimum height above the downstream piping (344.50(b)(4)(A) and (B)). The AVB’s own conditions went with it, including the six inches above downstream piping that the 2009 answers gave it (p. 16). That figure no longer describes any method the rule allows.
Two smaller backflow changes came in the same amendment:
- No approval list. The 2009 answers required a device approved by one of the bodies they list (p. 15). 344.50(a) now asks that an assembly be installed “according to manufacturer’s recommendations” with clearance for testing; the guide says the approval requirement was eliminated (p. 17).
- No Y-type strainer. The 2009 answers required a Y-type strainer on the inlet side of a double check installed below ground (p. 16). The amendment removed it (guide, p. 20). 344.50(d) now asks for three things on a below-ground double check: plugged test cocks, threaded non-ferrous plugs, and clearance all the way around.
2. The owner no longer gets the test report
The 2009 answers told irrigators to make sure the test results reached “the water purveyor and the irrigation system’s owner or owner’s representative within ten business days” (p. 15). Today 30 TAC 344.52(c) reads:
The irrigator shall ensure the backflow prevention assembly is tested prior to being placed in service and the test results provided to the local water purveyor within ten business days of testing the backflow prevention assembly.
The guide describes the amendment as one “to remove the requirement to provide a test report to the ‘irrigation system’s owner or owner’s representative’” (p. 21). The ten business days and the purveyor were already in the 2009 rule. What changed is who receives the report, not when it is due.
The testing duty itself now sits in its own subsection, 344.50(e): every assembly is tested by a licensed backflow prevention assembly tester “upon installation, repair, replacement, or relocation”, and an assembly on a system designated a health hazard is tested every year.
3. Head spacing gained a 10 percent band
The 2009 answers put the spacing rule flatly: do not exceed the maker’s published radius or spacing between emission devices (p. 8). 30 TAC 344.62(b)(1) keeps that sentence and adds one: “In no instance shall the spacing exceed plus or minus 10% of the manufacturer’s published radius or spacing of the device(s).” The definition of head-to-head spacing in 344.1(15) says the same thing more briefly: “A deviation of 10% or less is acceptable.” The guide says the change “accommodates variations in installations” (p. 23).
The band runs from the maker’s published figure at a stated operating pressure, so the radius has to come from the maker’s chart for that nozzle and pressure before the 10 percent means anything.
What the amendment left alone
Set the 2009 answers beside the current rule and several figures have not moved. The RPZ and PVB heights read as they did in 2009 too (p. 16).
| Rule | 2009 answers | 30 TAC 344 since July 26, 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Spray head from hardscape | no closer than four inches | four inches, 344.62(b)(3) |
| Narrow strips | no above-ground spray under 48 inches | the same, 344.62(b)(2) |
| PVC velocity | five feet per second at most | the same, 344.62(d) |
| Test results to the purveyor | ten business days | ten business days, 344.52(c) |
The 2009 answers are TCEQ’s own document and still useful for the rules that did not change. For the backflow list, the test report and spacing, the rule text of 2020 is the one to learn, and the Backflow practice questions are written to it.