Hello. I was wondering if anyone here could give me some input on installing (decorative/holiday) lights on the underside of my porch. I am providing a link to a photo so that you can get an idea as to what I'm trying to do. I want to install inconspicuous spotlights on the underside of my porch just about 8" behind the gutters to highlight the urns and flower boxes that wrap around the sides of our porch. Basically what I am trying to do is create some fun lighting to highlight holiday decorations that I put in my urns and flower boxes during the holiday season from October through February. In past years I ran one of those bright orange electrical extension cords and tacked it up along the siding and ceiling of the porch but I want to do a more clean professional look for obvious reasons. I can get into the ceiling and behind the siding to hide a romex wire to make this all look a lot cleaner. But I have a few questions. This is a bit of a tedious project so I'll try to keep this as simple as possible. Any input would be greatly appreciated: 1) As I mentioned earlier, I can get a romex into the ceiling and behind the siding. But since I want these lights on a timer and will need to adjust the times of operation as the days get shorter (and then longer after the winter solstice) what would be the best way to connect all of this to a power source where I can adjust the time it all turns on? There is an outlet I installed that is on the outside that you can't see because the railing is blocking it. But I thought of somehow running the wires to connect to this power source but somehow pulling the (romex) wire out of the siding near the outlet and somehow converting the romex from there to a plugin type connection to connect to the outdoor outlet. But would this be grotesquely against code? I have no idea how to make this work. 2) There are three flower boxes and one urn on each side. I plan to connect the first spotlight over the urn and then run an exterior type conduit (which I'll paint white to blend in with the ceiling of the porch) to "daisy-chain" a spotlight over each of the following three flower boxes. Do I have to install a surface-mount junction box at each point where a spotlight will be positioned? To try and keep this looking as clean and streamlined as possible I was wondering if I could run the surface mounted conduit but then recess the the junction box in some way so that they don't stick out like sore thumbs along the ceiling board of the porch. So four lights will be daisy-chained on one side and connected to an outlet on one side (this is a duplex, by the way) and another separate connection of four lights daisy-chained will be connected to another power source on the other side. I plan to use some type of dimmable LED spotlight bulbs that use 5-6w of energy. So each side should be using no more than approximately 24w of power. Here is the URL to a photo I took. I can't seem to attach it as it's too big of a file Hope to get some input. Thanks.

Hi there. I bought a fixer upper and am planning to upgrade to a 200A service. I am not positive what I have now, but believe it to be either 60 or 100. Permits are not required in my area (rural midwest). I am working alongside an electrician friend who will do most of the heavy lifting. My question is in regards to the meter/meter base: if upgrading to a new panel, do I also need to upgrade to a new 200A meter socket? Is this my concern or the electric company's? Any tips? Thanks!