Vuba Stone: a permeable stone surface for patios, pool decks and driveways

What Vuba Stone is

Picture a layer of small, rounded marble stones bound together with a clear resin and troweled smooth, so the finished surface looks like a bed of fine gravel you can't kick loose. That's resin-bound surfacing, and Vuba Stone is the system we chose: real European marble and quartz aggregates, a polyurethane resin engineered for freeze and thaw, and a reinforcing mesh when it goes over an existing slab.

• Permeable. The stones are bound at their contact points, so water passes through the surface and into the ground below instead of sitting in puddles.
• One continuous surface. No pavers, no joints, no sand lines for weeds to take root in.
• UV-stable. The resin is built to hold its color in sun, so the blend you pick stays the blend you see.
• Textured. The stone itself gives grip, and an anti-slip quartz additive is available for pool surrounds and steps.
• Goes over concrete. Structurally sound concrete or asphalt stays in place. No tear-out, no new pour.

Why we offer it

We've been honest on this site about the one real threat to a floor coating: moisture. Concrete holds water after rain, and an outdoor slab in Michigan gets rained on, snowed on and thawed over and over. Our polyaspartic flake system does well on patios and porches that drain properly, which is why we keep offering it. But some slabs never dry out, sit low in the yard, or pool water every spring, and we'd rather not put a sealed coating on top of that and hope.

Vuba Stone solves the problem from the other direction. Instead of sealing water out, it lets water through. For a slab with drainage trouble, that's the right tool, and it's a look you can't get from flake. Our crew completed Vuba Stone's installer training before we put it on this page, because it's a technical system and the prep and mix have to be right.

Where Vuba Stone belongs

• Pool decks. Water from the pool and wet feet drain through instead of standing, and the anti-slip additive adds grip where you want it most.
• Patios. A natural stone look that suits a walkout, a fire pit area or a covered porch, in blends from pale gray to warm tan.
• Walkways and steps. Paths from the driveway to the door and the steps up to it, with no joints to heave or weed.
• Driveways. Resin-bound surfacing is used on driveways across North America. Tell us about yours and we'll look at the slab underneath.

What it isn't for: garage and basement floors. Inside, you want the sealed, wipe-clean surface of our polyurea and polyaspartic flake coating, not a surface water can pass through.

Vuba Stone or a flake coating?

Both go over existing concrete, both hold their color in the sun, and both come from us. The difference is what happens to water.

• Pick a flake coating when the slab drains well, you want a sealed surface that wipes clean, and you like the speckled flake look. It's thinner, and it's what we install on garages, porches and most patios.
• Pick Vuba Stone when water sits on the slab, you want it to drain through, or you want the look of natural stone. It's a thicker, textured surface that reads like fine gravel set in place.
• Not sure? Send us photos of the slab after a rain. Where the water sits tells us most of what we need to know.

How a Vuba Stone job goes

1. Look at the slab. We check that the concrete or asphalt is sound, note any low spots, and talk through how the area drains today.
2. Pick a blend. Vuba Stone comes in a range of marble blends. We'll help you shortlist a few that work with your house and the surfaces around it.
3. Prep. The surface is cleaned and prepared and the reinforcing mesh goes down over the existing slab.
4. Mix and trowel. Aggregate and resin are mixed on site and troweled to a smooth, even surface, then left to cure before you walk on it.

Where we install Vuba Stone

Same area as the rest of our work: Livingston and Oakland counties, from Howell and Brighton to Milford and South Lyon. See every town on our service area page.

Vuba Stone questions