Solace Inspections & Construction

Meet Chris Marcoux, the Home Inspector Behind Solace Inspections in North Bay

When you book an inspection with Solace Inspections & Construction, Chris Marcoux is the one who shows up, the one who walks the house with you, and the one who picks up the phone two months later when you cannot find the shut off for your outside tap. There is no call centre and no junior tech. He is licensed, he is insured, and he does the work himself.

Chris moved to Powassan from Southern Ontario just under two years ago. He grew up in the Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury area, followed his father south for work, and came back when a good part of his family had settled around North Bay. In his words, this is where he really wanted to set his roots again.

Home Inspections Across Northern Ontario Since 2025

Solace was registered in October 2025 and opened properly the following May, once the insurance was in place. Before that Chris spent most of his working life as a licensed automotive service technician. He owned Chris's Automotive in Fisherville for about ten years, ran the shop floor at Zen Construction in Haldimand County for five or six more, and served almost a decade as a volunteer firefighter with the Haldimand County Fire Department, which like most of rural Ontario runs on volunteers.

Three careers, and all three show up in a report. The mechanic diagnoses systems. The builder knows what is behind the drywall, because he has done basement renovations, interlock driveways, patios and full house flips. The firefighter looks for the hazard first.

He trained through Carson Dunlop, the Canadian home inspection school, and came up through the Starter Company Plus program at the Nipissing Parry Sound Business Centre. He still teaches, too. Thursday afternoons he is at Canadore College in the automotive program, passing on thirty years of diagnosing things for a living to the next set of technicians.

None of it came easy. He spent the first stretch of 2026 recovering from shoulder surgery, and rather than sit still he used the time to build every template, agreement and report format the business runs on today.

Where the Name Solace Came From

Solace means comfort or reassurance in a time of uncertainty, and the name traces back to a cottage on Agnew Lake, west of Sudbury, where Chris spent every summer of his childhood with his grandparents. From the day school let out to the day it started again, that was where he lived.

Years later, when they started wintering in Florida, the place was broken into more than once. Jewellery went. Heirlooms went. The things you cannot replace went. After the last one they decided they could not take it any more and sold the cottage. Chris has carried that around ever since, and the question it left him with is the one Solace was built to answer: if somebody had simply been checking on the place, would they still have it?

What to Ask Before You Hire a Home Inspector

Chris says there is one question buyers almost never think to ask, and it is not about the inspection at all. It is what happens after it.

You trust the report, you waive your conditions, you move in. Three months later something small goes wrong and it is nobody's liability, you just do not know how the house works. Can you still call the inspector?

With Solace you can. Call him about a hose bib you cannot turn on and he will stop by that evening, show you where the main shut off is, and not send a bill for it. He treats the report as the start of the relationship rather than the end of the job.

What a Solace Home Inspection Covers

There are four reasons people call. A buyer's inspection once an offer is in, so you know what you are actually buying. An inspection before you list, so you find the problems before a buyer's inspector does and can fix them or price them in. A maintenance inspection, for owners who simply want to know where their house stands. And the four point inspection covering roof, structure, heating, plumbing and electrical, which is often what an insurer wants to see on an older home.

A basic inspection on a smaller house starts around four hundred and fifty dollars without septic. Every property is different, so call for a firm quote. Figure two and a half to three hours on site for an average two bedroom, two bathroom house, and the report shortly after.

Chris asks what is worrying you before he starts, works the house on his own, then walks it with you once he is done. Nothing in the report is the first you have heard of it.

Thermal Imaging, Drone Roof Imaging and Inspections Where the Road Ends

A Solace inspection covers the usual ground and a few things most inspectors around here do not carry. Thermal imaging finds what the eye cannot, behind walls and above ceilings, which is how missing insulation, a wet spot and an overheating breaker give themselves away. A drone puts eyes on a roof without a ladder, which matters on a steep pitch, a wet day, or three storeys. Accessible well and septic components get a visual look as part of the overall inspection. Chris is clear about the limit of that: it is not a specialized septic inspection, he is not a licensed septic inspector, and anything that concerns him goes in the report with a recommendation to get a qualified septic professional in.

Then there is the part that matters in this district. Solace goes to properties reached by boat, ATV, Jeep or snowmobile, and his reporting software runs on his phone with the service off, so a camp an hour past the last cell tower gets the same report as a house in town. He drives there himself, in a truck built for it.

Radon Testing in North Bay and Across the Canadian Shield

Chris is certified to measure radon, and most people here have never tested for it. It rises out of the bedrock as uranium breaks down, and the Canadian Shield produces plenty of it. There is nothing you can see, smell or taste, and no rule of thumb by neighbourhood. One house can read fifty becquerels per cubic metre while the house next door reads three or four hundred.

After smoking, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer overall, and among people who have never smoked it is the leading cause. It is also one of the easier problems to fix once you know the number. Levels are usually higher through the heating season, when the house is shut up tight, which is exactly why the cold months are the right time to test.

Solace runs both electronic monitoring, for a reading now, and long term testing. Health Canada asks for a minimum of ninety one days, taken across the heating season, before anyone makes a decision on the result.

Home Watch for Snowbirds and Cottage Owners

Home Watch is the service Chris most wants to grow, for the reason above. If you are in Mexico for a month or your camp on Lake Nipissing sits empty all winter, he checks it on a schedule: the roof, the driveway, the heat, the pipes, tire tracks that should not be there. Scheduled visits, a visual inspection, anything of concern documented, and a report back to you.

If something does need attention he is on the ground and insured, so he can coordinate access for a contractor with your authorization. Not a neighbour doing you a favour. A licensed business with a key.

Camera monitoring and remote access are where he wants to take it, and he is straight about the fact that they are not a standard part of the service yet. Ask him where it stands.

Working With Realtors on Inspections Before You List

A good part of Chris's work comes through realtors, and the ones who have used him tend to come back, because he answers his phone and he can usually get there in the morning. Since launching Solace he has worked with agents from Revel Realty, Coldwell Banker and Century 21, and he is still building relationships with brokerages across the area.

The smarter listings now get inspected before they hit the market. The seller finds out what a buyer's inspector would have found, fixes what is worth fixing, and goes to market with the report in hand instead of losing the deal to a surprise at the eleventh hour. Chris offers preferred brokerage pricing to the realtors and brokerages he works with regularly, and each one gets a service package laying out exactly what is included and what it costs.

Home Inspections for Powassan, Callander, Sturgeon Falls, Mattawa and Parry Sound

Solace covers North Bay, Powassan, Callander, Sturgeon Falls, Mattawa, Trout Creek, South River, Restoule, Magnetawan, Burk's Falls, Parry Sound, Huntsville and Marten River, with other locations by request.

That spread is deliberate. This is an area with more cottages than subdivisions, more wells than water mains, and a shortage of inspectors willing to drive an hour of gravel to reach either. Chris will.

Where Solace Inspections Is Headed

The word Construction in the name is not decoration. Chris has a construction background deep enough to run a crew, and the plan is a second division doing decks, docks, fences, patios and light construction once the inspection side can run without him standing in it. He is also working toward additional Ontario Building Code qualifications.

His goal for next year is another qualified inspector, trained to Solace standards and on the payroll, which is a year of schooling for whoever takes it on. Ten or fifteen years out he would like Solace to be a name somebody could buy into and run in Huntsville, Sudbury or Parry Sound. For now he is doing the inspections himself, which is the part you benefit from.

What to Expect When You Call Solace Inspections

Ask Chris what he would want a customer to say about him and he does not mention the inspection. He says personable, easy to deal with, and explains everything very thoroughly.

That last one is what he holds himself to. Full disclosure, whether it helps the sale or hurts it. He is blunt about why. This is a trust business, and you cannot be in it with a poor image.

You will also leave with more than a report. Every Solace inspection comes with a home maintenance guide, a hundred page book on what to check and when, because the point is not to hand you a document. It is to hand you a house you understand.

When he is not working he is usually outside. His wife drives a lifted Jeep, there is a tent on the roof of his truck, and between them they have five kids. In his words, in the summertime he spends almost as much time in that tent as he does in his own bed.

Ask him how the business got off the ground and he does not start with himself. He starts with the family and friends who believed him when it was still an idea, and with Zach Graff and the team at the Nipissing Parry Sound Business Centre, who walked him through the program that got the doors open.

Chris is building this one job at a time, and he has a line for it. One stone laid every day.