I thought this would be a really quick job. One live wire, one neutral wire, and one ground wire. Cut the power, hook up the 3 wires, turn on the power…
The problem was that when i opened up the junction box it was all weird looking.
I see the live and neutral wires (which i’m assuming are the red and black wires) that are running along the ceiling and coming in from the side (on the left). But then coming out of the ceiling is a what looks like a portable lamp cord… that appears to be acting as a ground. The problem is that this cord has two cables (if you look close you can see that it’s pulled apart near the ceiling), not one cable, like a normal ground. Additionally, when i first opened it up, one of these “ground” cables was connected to the black cable on the left (the one that runs along the ceiling).
This all looks really weird to me compared to what i thought i would see. And from what i had figured out, ground and neutral were not supposed to be bonded except at the main panel. So that seemed dangerous.
I was wondering if anyone else has seen this or if there’s a simple thing i can do to figure this out (i have a voltage meter).
Thank you to anyone that has thoughts about this situation.
See pics below
