How to Fix Your Nest Thermostat When it Won't Respond

January 18, 2016

If you have a Nest Thermostat you probably read about the recent issues and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter.

But fear not!

Nest Support has published an instructional page with the very convenient title “What to do if your Nest Thermostat has become slow, unresponsive, or won’t turn on.” Yes, that’s really the title.

For complete instructions, see their Nest Support page. For a quick summary, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were updated at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016 to software version 5.1.3 or later may have some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not effectively charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the glitch and get it up and running again.

Signs of this problem include the following:

the thermostat being offline in the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to shut down
the thermostat’s animated properties are slower than usual
the thermostat shows a notification that says, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;”
the thermostat’s display won’t light up and unresponsive (you may also observe a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat will turn on but you can’t control it or it’s acting sluggish, try manually restarting it and turn the thermostat off and then back on again. If your Nest Thermostat is off and won’t turn on, take the thermostat off the base and charge it using a USB cable plugged into a wall charger or a computer.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try to restart your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t explain why, but if they say don’t do it, DO NOT DO IT.)

After around 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while charging, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has completely restarted, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reattach it to its base.

You should be be ready to go at this point, but if you're done with Nest and want to switch your thermostat, you can see our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still giving you trouble, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 866-397-3787 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you have another error, such as a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat could be functioning as it's meant to. You may need to call Service Experts as one of North America's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Also, do not let this matter scare you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is really saving money for you every day. When set it up appropriately, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings every day, which typically results in payback within 12 months. And, Nest is still one of the only thermostats under $300 on the market that does this. So don’t let one complication get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the top investments in your home that you can make.

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