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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you have probably read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of the dreaded technology glitch that is causing many Nest users to lose heat in the dead of winter.

But fear not!

Nest Support has published a page with step by step instructions with the very convenient title “What to do if your Nest Thermostat has become slow, unresponsive, or won’t turn on.” Obvious, much?

For more detailed information, go to Nest Support page. For a quick overview, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were recently updated to software version 5.1.3 or later have been having some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not efficiently charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the problem and get it up and working again.

Symptoms of this glitch include the following:

the thermostat being offline in the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat tells you the battery is low and it needs to shut down
the thermostat’s animated properties are slower than usual
the thermostat shows an alert 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 is on but you can’t control it or it’s running slow, 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 cord plugged into a wall charger or a computer.

CAUTION: Do not try to restart your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t go into detail why, but if Nest says don’t do it, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while plugged in, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has completed the restart, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat and reconnect 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 attempted both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in some backup. Enter us! If Roland J. Down Service Experts put in your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 518-417-2938 or schedule an appointment online.

And if encounter another issue, such as a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat is likely working as intended. You may need to call Roland J. Down as one of Albany's premier furnace experts to fix your system.

Finally, do not let this situation panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then alters your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings constantly, 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 incident get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the best investments in your home that you can make.

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