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If the proper functioning of a smoke detector is to wake you up in the middle of the night with a hard to locate intermittent chirp that indicates no imminent danger, and cannot be silenced without getting out a ladder, removing said detector from the ceiling, removing the battery, and then pushing the test button resulting in a VERY LOUD but fortunately short alarm. But only the pencil-pushing bureaucrats at city hall think that.
As for fuses, I would feel the same about removing AFCIs if the damn things tripped every time you used a perfectly good vacuum cleaner (as was a problem for earlier ones).
Alerting you that it's running out of power instead of leaving you unaware that it has silently failed is the alarm functioning properly.
Removing a smoke alarm is practically the same amount of work as replenishing or replacing, more if you have to patch and paint any holes. They're not expensive, the first place I checked sells a twin pack for £15.
I can say from experience it's better coming home to the news that you'll have to clean up smoke damage in the kitchen than whatever the outcome might have been if we hadn't had a smoke alarm.
That's what you and the bureaucrats say. I say waking me up in the middle of the night with such an alert is broken by design.
As for actual alerts, so far I'm a dozen or so to zero for false-to-real ratio. Most due to cooking, some due to shower steam, and a couple due to defective detectors that just went off for no reason.
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