@Sam208 Your cancellations would have not been penalized if you had contacted Airbnb to explain before cancelling or declining. Construction, or construction noise would fall under "extenuating circumstances" and you could have asked Airbnb to cancel on that basis with no penalties attached.
As far as the second one- your terminology makes it confusing to understand. Inquiries are either Pre-approved or Declined, but you actually don't have to do either- if it's an Inquiry, simply messaging back the guest with 24 hours, without clicking on either of those, will not affect your stats. Booking Requests are either Approved or Declined. You do have to perform one of those actions within 24 hours or you'll be penalized.
When you pre-approve an Inquiry, that means you have accepted- the guest is then free to continue with booking.
BTW, although it didn't cause me to lose Superhost status, about a year ago, Airbnb simply stopped sending me text alerts. That resulted in me missing the 24 hour deadline to approve or decline a booking request, which I wasn't aware I had gotten. It was definitely an Airbnb tech glitch, which it took them a month to rectify. And even though the guest did end up booking when I got back to her after 25 hours, my response rate went from 100% to 86%, even though it was their fault. Unfair, but it's a frustrating company to deal with.