So for the last 3 years, there has been a piece of wire dangling

>>1077223
neutral is your earth. maybe he means that it contains no dedicated earth? aka, a backup neutral

>>1077223

Find junction box, use existing wires to pull new complete set of wires.

With GFI it's easy enough to check whether the wire is neutral or earth, just light a bulb with it. If the GFI trips it was really earth.

If the GFI doesn't trip and the light works then one option is to simply ignore it and install the lamp armature without earth (if it's plastic then earthing adds bugger all).

Typical electrician, they're all idiots. The previous owners probably didn't use the right wires and have used the ground wire as neutral all this time, easily checked with a multimeter.

>>1077237
Sidenote, where the fuck is your membrane OP? That floor is damp as hell, and what is that on the left side? A pipe wrapped with some sort of insulation and ducktape?

>>1077228

There is a junction box very close by, about 30cm away on the other side of the joist, although there is a hole between the two so that should be fine to thread a wire through.

Britbong electrical wiring if that matters.

>>1077238

The floor is only damp on the top right corner of the image. The toilet had a leak about 3 months back, causing a small flood on that corner of the bathroom, probably caused the floorboards to dampen quite a bit.

Regarding the left side pipe, that is a pipe from the hot water tank, to the hot tap on the bath. Yeah insulation and ducktape I suppose. Some family friend did the whole bathroom renovation on the cheap. Basically my parents did a very poor job of maintaining the house, now it's fallen on my lap with 1,001 problems.

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It's the only way

>>1077283
Nothing wrong with the insulated pipe don't listen to fucking Yankee doodahs.
Post a picture of what is hanging from your ceiling.
You shouldn't have wires you should have a cable which is a collection of wires, usually grey possibly white. Wires should be sheathed with brown, blue, black or red but possibly yellow or grey if it was wired by a lunatic. Hopefully a bare conductor too which is your cpc (earth). The cpc should be smaller than the other wire(s), use a pair of calipers to measure the diameter, usually the cpc is cut off deep into the sheath, possibly the neutral is just stripped way too far back and looks like an earth.
Show us a picture.
Now is the time to be honest, your uncle isn't an electrician is he? You don't really have an uncle do you?

I suppose its possible the cpc was used as a neutral but that is bullshit dangerous and wouldn't work with new regs requiring earth fault protection (rcd)

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>>1077297

I do have an uncle, and he is an electrician, although when I told him that the wire was coming down from the ceiling and I had the pendant, he assumed it would be a five minute job. However he stripped away the end of the cable to find that there were only 2 wires inside (Live, Earth), instead of the 3 he expected (Live, Neutral, Earth). Therefore he didn't have the 3 wires to connect to the three terminals on the fitting.

So I took up the floorboard directly above , to see this cable going down a hole. The picture makes it look multicoloured, but that's just lighting, the whole thing is just black. inside that cable there are only 2 wires.

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>>1077223
Old wiring standards anon.
hot and earth/neutral

Earth and Neutral are the same thing, they tie to each other back at the first breaker box/load center.

Usually see this as a switched hot. Though if the fixture is old enough it might have been an old porcelain with chain. (pic related)

>>1077310

So what should happen to resolve it ? Just put the earth wire in neutral, or junction box it?

>>1077227
In US ground/earth is NOT THE same as neutral

Replace the wire ya dufus.

>>1077237

Depends how old the house is, OP

On newer homes, grounds go to the ground bus-bar and trip the breaker. So you cant use the ground as a neutral period

If you have an older house, they might share because if the feed side is drawing too much, the fuse will still blow. Therefore, grounds return to the neutral bus bar.

Has your uncle taken apart any of your other fixtures to see if the other wiring is the same?

>>1077355

1922, he hasn't yet, but I'll suggest that to him.

>>1077371
1922. At that age I'm almost expecting K&T (Knob and Tube) wiring. :)
My house is of similar age but has the woven glass covered wire. I've replaced quite a bit with Romex since the newer lamps (LED with Zigbee) need constant hot to work.

>>1077317
Use a plastic junction box. There won't be ground wire for the lamp, and don't connect the lamps ground wire (if it has one) to the neutral. Not an optimal solution. Far as code goes, you will have to ask a local electrician. You could chase this back to the load center (breaker box) and pull in a new run. All depends on how much of a pain in the ass it would be. Plus if your existing load center will even support it.

>>1077386
gack.. not glass. braided romex is the correct term. I need another cup o coffee....

Why is this thread still in halloween mode?

>>1077283
>renovation on the cheap
>parents did a very poor job of maintaining the house
>now it's fallen on my lap with 1,001 problems.

Welcome to my world, our house is full of little problems like this expect several junction boxes are now inaccessible thanks to a loft conversion.

We have flickering lights but can't do anything about it because my parents don't want to rip anything out, the floors are big wooden tongue and groove sheets so we can't just pull it up in little sections.

We literally had to get a hole drilled to access the bathroom junction box.