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Tested, Practical, and Becoming Normal: Grace Bergen on the Next Wave of High-Performance Building

Change Builders — Part 2 with Projects With Grace

In Part 2 of our Change Builders conversation with Grace Bergen of Projects With Grace, we zoomed out from the job site details and explored the bigger questions shaping high-performance building in B.C.:

Are we innovating fast enough?
Is regulation outpacing product availability?
How do we balance sustainability with affordability, without compromising results?

Grace’s answers were as grounded as her building approach: progress happens when products are proven, details are done correctly, and high-performance strategies become normal practice rather than “special upgrades.”

Are We Moving Too Fast or Too Slow?

When asked about the pace of innovation in the building industry, Grace offered a perspective that’s both reassuring and honest:

B.C. isn’t inventing everything from scratch, in many cases, we’re catching up.

A lot of the high-performance products and methods now gaining traction in Canada have already been developed and refined in Europe, where energy costs pushed innovation decades earlier.

Grace pointed to high-performance airtightness tapes as a great example.

Products like SIGA tapes, she explained, have already been tested over time, not just for adhesion, but for the realities of building movement: stretching, contraction, and durability behind the walls where you can’t see problems until it’s too late.

“They were the guinea pigs,” she said, and that history gives builders here more confidence that the products work.

In Canada, lower energy costs meant we could “get away with” less efficient construction for longer. But with shifting climate conditions and increasing performance expectations, the industry is now accelerating, with the advantage of using tools that have already been proven elsewhere.

Affordability vs Sustainability: The Real Balance Is Execution

Grace’s take on the affordability conversation wasn’t about cutting performance, it was about getting smarter in how we build.

In her view, a big part of cost control comes down to understanding how products are meant to work together — and using them correctly.

Because here’s the reality:

You can buy high-performance materials…
…but if you install them wrong, you’ve wasted money.

Grace emphasized that builders need to understand key differences in materials, like when a tape or membrane is permeable vs impermeable, and why choosing the wrong one in the wrong location can cause issues and eliminate the benefit.

That kind of knowledge is what prevents expensive mistakes, and helps keep high-performance upgrades truly cost-effective.

High-Performance Membranes Aren’t Always “That Much More”

Grace also challenged a common misconception: that high-performance air barrier systems are automatically cost-prohibitive.

Yes, self-adhered membranes can be expensive, but Grace noted that pricing has been changing, and when you compare high-quality options properly, the gap can be smaller than people assume.

And more importantly: it comes back to waste and handling.

Self-adhered membranes need careful installation. If wind catches a sheet and it sticks to itself, you can lose material fast. But used correctly, the added cost becomes a small percentage of the total build, especially when weighed against performance outcomes.

Her message was clear:

Use what you need.
Use it correctly.
Don’t waste it.
And the cost premium often isn’t as dramatic as people fear.

Five to Ten Years Out: High Performance Will Feel Normal

Grace has been building with exterior insulation and higher-performance detailing for years, and she’s already seen the shift.

Ten years ago, people stopped and questioned what she was doing.

“Why are you putting all that green fuzzy stuff on your house?” they’d ask.

Now, exterior insulation is becoming familiar. Builders, trades, and homeowners are seeing it more often — and as that visibility increases, the need to explain and justify it decreases.

Grace believes that in the next five to ten years, high-performance approaches will continue to become standard — particularly on exterior walls.

The Next Frontier: Exterior-Insulated Roofs

While exterior wall insulation is gaining traction, Grace hopes the next big leap will be exterior-insulated roofs — and she’s candid about why it hasn’t gone mainstream yet.

For her own home, adding thick mineral wool insulation above the roof deck was expensive, and it required crews who understood:

• how to handle the material
• how not to waste it
• what fasteners and attachment systems were required (and costly)

As a result, she hasn’t yet convinced a homeowner to do it, but she hopes that changes in the next five years.

Because from a building science standpoint, she sees major benefits.

Why Roof Exterior Insulation Solves So Many Problems

Grace explained one of the most frustrating airtightness challenges in typical Part 9 construction: ceilings and penetrations.

The time spent detailing around pot lights, for example, is significant. And even “airtight-rated” pot lights often still have visible holes and weak points, meaning builders end up relying on gaskets and secondary components across dozens of ceiling penetrations.

That’s a lot of risk and a lot of labor.

• With an exterior-insulated roof, those problems largely disappear:
• the attic becomes conditioned space
• ceiling penetrations become less critical to airtightness
• temperatures are more stable year-round
• summer overheating in attics becomes far less extreme

“It’s just better,” Grace said, plain and simple.

For builders and homeowners alike, it’s not just a performance upgrade. It’s a strategy that reduces complexity and improves durability.

Grace’s view: we’re not quite there yet, but we’re heading in that direction.

Learn More About Grace and Projects With Grace

If you want to learn more about Grace’s work, including high-performance building science and accessible/adaptive construction, you can find her at:

graceprojects.ca
(There’s a contact form on her website, and she’s happy to talk building science and accessibility.)