Lyndon Lee Started in the ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms) Industry in 1995.  Lyndon had been a wood stick home builder for 20 years and noticed problems with wood construction after homes were being built tighter and with more insulation to make them more energy efficient and comfortable to live in. 

Lyndon spent most of a year researching and traveling to ICF job sites of  the approximately 20 ICF brands on the market in the US and Canada. Most all of the ICF forms available in 1995 were waffle or post and beam systems which seemed to have more problems than the few flat wall systems being marketed. 

Lyndon chose a metric flat wall system and became a Greenblock ICF distributor which was headquartered in Woodland Park, CO., and manufactured in Granby Quebec. Greenblock of S.E. MN was started and Lyndon went from building with wood sticks to concrete ICF homes.

After first building a few complete concrete homes start to finish the company started specializing in just doing ICF walls and turning over the rest of the structure to other contractors. Lyndon then with his ICF expertise started to train other contractors, both masons and carpenters to build with ICF’s as well as do it yourselfers. 

In 2002 Reward Wall Systems came out the first reversible ICF flat wall system trademarked (I-Form).  With the improvements on the new form and better growing company to work with Lyndon became a Reward Wall Distributor and changed the business name to Tri-State ICF servicing Southeast Minnesota, Northeast Iowa, and the Coulee Region of Wisconsin in the spring of 2002. 

• Tri-State ICF was named Rookie of the year his first year at the Annual Reward Wall System Trip for his strong sales and dedication to the ICF Industry.
• Tri-State ICF was also honored for Best Residential ICF Home on a Reward Wall System Cruise to the Caribbean for a mansion on the Mississippi River in Wabasha MN complete with a separate ICF guest house.
• Tri-State ICF earned the Reward Wall Systems Presidents Club Award every year as a distributor for sales and dedication to the ICF Industry.

In 2014 Reward Wall Systems was acquired by Airlite Plastics and the I-Form was discontinued and replaced by the favored new Fox Block.

In the spring of 2014 Tri-State ICF started distributing the Fox Block along with the new Amvic Plus Form, replacing the Amvic form with the new Stronghold form upon its release in 2019.

Currently in 2021 Tri-State ICF will continue to offer both Fox Blocks and Stronghold to help satisfy a wider range of customer preferences along with having more supply available.

We believe these currently are the best ICF forms on the market and we have the expertise to make your ICF projects successful with these quality ICF products and accessories.

Lyndon Lee started working in the building industry in 1975 working summers and weekends at age 16 for Tranaas Builders mainly building new stick frame houses. He continued after High School full-time for a year-and-a-half before attending Winona State University for four years with an Industry Major.

He had a teacher that lived in a Domed Foam concrete home that gave him the first taste and ideas of building better, stronger, more energy efficient homes.  Lyndon moved back to Mabel and started his own Building business, originally with a couple different partners for a few years. Lyndon then briefly bolted to the Twin Cities, working for Pat Hannillay and Associates, building a mansion on a Twin Cities Lake. His short time in the Metro made him realize he was a small town country man, so he moved back to Mabel and started Lee Builders in 1990. 

Over the next five years, Lyndon started getting educated on building science.  Homes were built much tighter and moisture problems were showing up along with mold. Codes were changing to help prevent issues with moisture with vapor barriers, house wrap, etc. now part of the codes. Lyndon researched perm ratings of first Plywood and then OSB (Oriented Strand Board)  after it came into widespread use and the perm ratings with all the glue used to bond the small chips was (1 perm) essentially a vapor barrier.  If you have a vapor barrier on the inside of poly and outside of the wall with sheathing how does the wall assembly dry out?  And the wood being organic is a food source for mold. In MN’s climate the temperature and humidity change sometime daily by 40 to 50 degrees along with humidity change.  A wood framed house is always expanding and shrinking with the temperature and humidity changes. Lyndon was done with wood sticks for the outside walls.  Lyndon’s college experience with the foam and concrete dome house led him to research Insulated concrete Forms or (ICF).  At that time in 1995 there were about 20 different companies producing ICF forms.  Most all of them were waffle forms like the original patent