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This definitely looks like an old gas line. My house was built in 1899. When we redid the electricity, behind each wall sconce, there was an old gas line. I traced all the gas line back down to the basement and all the way up to the attic.

I have a house in North Eastern NJ 30 mins outside of NYC built in 1927 and I found one of those cast iron mounts behind a flush mount in a bedroom. I have the same cloth buffered rubber BX in my house where it hadn’t been replaced during renovations by the previous owner.

I wound up removing the cast iron mount (mine had no connected gas) and replacing it with an old work fan box and romex back to the switch. I know this isn’t to code but did check for ground and I have it (yes I’ve read the story’s of high resistance grounding on BX causing it to glow like a toaster coil when there’s a fault) and I also replaced the breaker with an AFCI. I didn’t like the idea of having the BX leads in their condition living in the canopy of the fixture attached to a mount that wasn’t designed to carry the fixture. I was laminating my ceiling so I wasn’t concerned about damage, I appreciate that your case is likely different than mine in terms of total work.

What I found interesting is I removed a portion of the BX from that circuit and once you got 6 inches or more from the fixture end of the circuit, the leads were in really good condition below the sheathing. The rubber was very pliable and didn’t crack when you bent it. There was also was what appeared to be a very light gauge bonding strip inside the sheathing so I’m not sure if this wiring was circa 1927 or newer

I would say if yours isn’t connected to gas, I’d remove it and see if you couldn’t get the wiring into a metal old work box, use a anti short bushing, and check for ground continuity.

Divide it up into person/days, i.e. 1 person 12 days = 12 PDs, 2 people 4 days = 8 PDs. Divide the total cost ($3,572) by the total number of PDs, then assign individual cost by the PDs used.

Ratio is correct.

To put it into algebra. For each person staying (a-g) replace the letter with the number of nights they are staying so:

(a+b+c+d+e+f+g) * x = $3,572

where x is the cost per person-night.

x = $3,572 / (a+b+c+d+e+f+g)

Then the actual cost per person is

a*x = Cost for a

b*x = Cost for b

etc

My refrigerators are wired with 18 gauge wire and plugged into a 20A circuit.

Many modern refrigerators, lamps etc are still wired with 18 gauge wire, 16 if you're lucky.

A 16 gauge ungrounded cord is perfectly acceptable.

If you draw 15 amps on that 16 gauge cord over 50 feet all that's going to happen is excessive voltage drop and the cord will feel warm.

16 gauge cord is fine on a 15 amp circuit especially with the small load you have. Using a larger cord with a short piece of 16 gauge is a good idea as it will limit voltage drop although probably not necessary with the small load.

Plug into a GFCI receptacle if you can.

The trimmer is not internally grounded it is considered double insulated.

I put four Square D QO combination arc fault/ground in when I upgraded my service in 2017. The only nuisance trips I’ve had were caused by a pretty fancy computer running graphics intensive software. Otherwise they haven’t been a problem at all.

I've had a couple of QO breakers installed next door for several years now, I'm unaware of any issues with them. I did exchange one during the initial install, as it didn't trip when I used my Amprobe ACFI tester (INSP-3). I later heard that the only legit test is the test button, so take that with a grain of salt.

Not sure if any brands are exempt from random tripping.

Sq D Qo has usually been considered the top of the line for years even used on commercial jobs FWIW. Don't know how their GFCI/AFCI breakers are holding up. Will try and find out.