Thanks all! Yes, the reason I'm asking is to see if any of this far-more-knowledgable-than-me forum can advise me before I start calling plumbers.
As to your various questions:
- CH not making a noise
- there hasn't been any building work done for the last day or two now & problem remains.
- actually it may be just the cold water. John's question made me double check all the hot taps and it's only the mixer taps where hot seems to be affected, so I'm guessing that could be because of the cold (?).
- it's not really a splutter, it's a regular pattern of surges, about 1 per second. It's almost as if someone's turning the taps half off and back on again so the flow peaks and troughs. But there is always a flow, no air pockets or spluttering as it comes out.
- cold water from mains, hot from a standard copper boiler that's fed from cold tank in the loft
I wouldn't be bothered about the flow issue in itself, I'm just worried it may be a symptom of something that's going to get a lot worse/very expensive (eg could the pipes be damaged?) Also concerned about the effect of uneven flow on kitchen appliances.
Incidentally... maybe I should admit at this point that I am in fact female (I can almost see your collective eyes rolling upwards at this point
)
thanks again everyone for your replies
Jo