Texas Electrical Code PrepWhat changed in the 2026 edition

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The national GFCI date lands on September 1 and the proposal to move it is open until September 9

Texas left the expiration out of the exception when it adopted the 2026 edition. Everywhere else the exemption lapses on the first of the month while the amendment that would extend it is still collecting comment on the ninth.

On this page
  1. Two dates, and they arrive in the wrong order
  2. Pending is not a status you can install to
  3. Texas took the shorter route
  4. The exemption is narrower than the shorthand
  5. What to look at on September 9, and where to stop
  6. What this page cites

Two dates, and they arrive in the wrong order

NEC 210.8(F) Exception No. 2 carries an expiration printed inside the exception itself, and the date printed there is September 1, 2026. That is the same day the 2026 edition takes effect in Texas under 16 TAC 73.100.

The date is corroborated. The wording of the sentence carrying it is not, so this page does not quote it. The versions in circulation read expire September 1, 2026, where the construction the code customarily uses in a clause of that kind is expire on a date. That is the difference you get when a line has been retyped rather than read, so take the date from here and the sentence from NEC 210.8(F) in your own book.

The edition does not simply let the exception lapse and leave nothing behind it. IAEI reports that the 2026 text puts four compliant options in its place: a Class A GFCI, a Class A device marked HF or HF+, a Class C special purpose ground-fault circuit interrupter, and a Class C SPGFCI marked HF or HF+. The national picture after September 1 is a changed set of acceptable devices rather than a hole, and the amendment below is not the only route out of it.

Tentative Interim Amendment 1924 is the proposal that would push that date out to September 1, 2028. It is pending at NFPA and its comment period closes September 9, 2026.

Put those in calendar order and the sequence is backwards. The printed date arrives on the first. The document that would change the printed date is still open for comment on the ninth.

Pending is not a status you can install to

An amendment of this kind carries the full weight of the code once NFPA issues it and none at all before. There is no halfway position, and there is nothing in between to work from.

That distinction is the first thing lost in secondary coverage. A proposal and an issued amendment read identically in a headline, and the only word separating them is one nobody puts in a headline.

As of the last week of August 2026, nothing about 1924 is settled. The comment period had not closed. No issuance date exists to quote. Anyone telling a contractor in September that the national exemption has been extended for two years is describing a document that has not been issued.

The reverse error is just as easy. Reading the expiration and stopping there gives you a firm answer that is firm only in the places where nobody amended it.

Texas took the shorter route

The state did not wait on the amendment and did not copy it. 16 TAC 73.100(b) picks up Exception No. 2 and leaves the expiration sentence out of the adoption.

That is not a two year extension. It is the absence of an end date, which behaves differently: an extension runs out and this does not.

So the outcome of 1924 is a matter of interest here rather than a matter of planning. If NFPA issues it, the rest of the country moves to 2028 and the Texas position is unchanged. If NFPA does not, the rest of the country stays expired and the Texas position is unchanged.

Worth noticing what that says about the two documents. From September 1 the code adopted in Texas and the code printed by NFPA are not the same code, and the difference is one sentence that only appears in one of them.

The exemption is narrower than the shorthand

The version going around is that Texas kept the GFCI exemption. What Texas kept is one exception, and its reach is fixed by its own wording: listed heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment. That phrase is the state rule's own and it is exact. It is heating, ventilation and air conditioning, not refrigeration.

What the state rule does not do is describe the occupancies. 16 TAC 73.100(b) names subsection (F), Outdoor Outlets, and stops there. The answer sits a line above the exception, in the sentence that opens the subsection, and that sentence begins "For dwellings" (NEC 210.8(F)). An exception reaches no further than the rule it hangs off, so what Texas kept alive is a dwelling exemption. Anything that is not a dwelling was outside subsection (F) to begin with and is outside the Texas amendment with it.

The same opening sentence puts two more limits on what the exception can reach, and one of them moved this cycle. The circuit has to be single-phase at 150 volts or less to ground, and its rating has to land at 60 amperes or less, which is up from 50 in the previous edition (NEC 210.8(F)). So a dwelling outdoor unit on a heavier circuit than that sits outside the subsection, and the Texas amendment does nothing for it either way.

The rest of NEC 210.8 sits where it always sat. Nothing about the Texas amendment reaches the bathroom, kitchen, garage or basement receptacle rules, and nothing about it reaches an outdoor outlet serving anything other than that listed equipment.

Local amendments still stack on top. A city can be stricter than 16 TAC 73.100(b), and several are, so the state position is the floor rather than the finish.

What to look at on September 9, and where to stop

A comment period closing is not a decision. It is the point after which a decision becomes possible, and the gap between those two things can be long.

The place to look is the NFPA document information page for NFPA 70, which is free to read and lists amendments alongside their status and their dates. It is linked in the citations below, and it distinguishes issued from pending in a way that reposted summaries do not.

What to look for is whether 1924 appears with an issue date attached. If it does, the national date moved. If it appears as pending, or does not appear at all, the national date did not move.

Then stop, because in Texas the answer is the same either way. That is the reason to spend eight minutes on this once rather than watching it every week.

What this page cites

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