donald girod wrote:

Actually, the National Electrical Code has required interconnected
hard-wired smoke alarms in all new construction for some years now, and in
fact in some places (Town of Tonawanda, in western New York state) they are
requiring them before you can sell and existing house, or if you get a
building permit for remodeling. Think about what a pain THAT is. Lots of
chopped up ceilings. A former neighbor had an estimate of $1800, just so he
could sell his house.

I don't think dissassembly is an option with these alarms--the plastic is
welded together. But I didn't use "compressed gas", it was compressed air
at 100 psi, and the dust blew all over the place. Still, I suppose there
could be a spider web in there.

((Snipped previous))

Well, I was afraid that might be the case someplaces, but
the problem with interconnected alarms is you don't know
which detector set it off, so you don't know where the
smoke/fire might be and could be critical to your evacuation
route. It makes my head hurt to think of the way simple
things get screwed up. The obvious solution, if they decide
to wire them together (which is a dumb idea), is to have a
different signal (frequency or multiple blasts) key to each
detector so you would know which one did the detecting.

If you have the type I have (based on light diffusion by
smoke), just blowing it may not solve a spider web problem
because the web (or spider) could be in the tunnel with the
detector and sealed which would just blow the web/spider
back into that tunnel and not out of the dectector.

You could locate the detector by just wiring around a
different one for a night or two and when you find a silent
night you would find which detector was having a problem.
Then, just replace that unit.
Good luck. Personally I would do what I want makes the most
sense to be safe, regardless of laws, and then change back
to whatever was required when I sold the house.