Since we're talking about smoke alarms--be sure to read your owner's manual and learn how to turn off the smoke alarms when they go off and also how to tell which alarm has been activated because, with ours anyway, you have to find the one that was activated to turn the alarm off completely. We didn't read our owner's manual and they went off in the middle of the night shortly after we moved in--a bug set them off. Needless to say, it was miserable until we figured out how to turn them off. Ours had a hush button that would turn them off for 7 minutes and then they would start again. We kept pushing the hush button thinking that we were turning them off and they kept coming back on . . .

My grandmother used salt in another way. She was the dutiful wife of a sweet minister who, without consulting her, purchased and planted many various fruit trees in their back yard. Two were in the way of the wash line, or maybe the story was they were berry trees and the birds would stain the wash. Anyhow, she wanted them gone but did not have the heart to point out to her sweet husband the bad planning. So every time she went into the back yard, she put several handfuls of salt into her apron pocket and liberally sprinkeled the root zone of these two trees with salt. Before long, they died of some unexplainable blight, and grandma had her wash line to her liking.

8' being too close depends on the layout of the area. A non working range hood will put out and trip alarms what you can't see by eye. A sensitive alarm is ok in my book but not so sensitive that it irratates you and the monitoring outfit for cooking fumes. Good advise to contact both the alarm co as well as your monitoring outfit so they can see your layout in person.

I did it because it is a requirement, not because it was a good thing to do. And again I say, "How do they enforce Code ON ANY modification or requirement if they do not have a reason to inspect?" This is no different then any code requirement, even if no inspection is called for. Other ways that it would be found out is when you sell, when the Insurance Company doesn't pay. When family members don't come to the funeral nor look you in the eye after the fire. In many jurisdictions here, the Fire Department will provide and install the new code compliant detectors at no cost. (They likely seen the results of faulty or non-existent detectors.) To challenge a safety improvement/requirement seems something that a rational person would not do. PS If you go to sell your home, you would have to disclose the fact that the Fire Detectors were not current code compliant. If you were not aware, the Realtor surely would be. If not, the Home Inspector would not leave him self open to future litigation should a non-compliant house he inspected were sold and subsequently a fire was shown to have been made worse by faulty ire Detectors.