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

January 18, 2016

If your home has the Nest Thermostat you probably read about the recent issues 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.

We are here to calm your fears!

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, see their Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were recently updated to software version 5.1.3 or later may have some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not effectively charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the issue and get it up and going again.

Indications of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being down on the Nest App and disconnected from 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 is black and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is turned on but you can’t control it or it’s performing slow, try manually restarting it beginning with turning 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.

ATTENTION: Do not try to power on or off 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, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the thermostat has turned on during this time, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has completed the restart, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base.

You should be be ready to go at this point, but you can't get it to work and want to switch your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have attempted both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in reinforcements. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning set up your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 925-364-5427 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you've got another issue, like 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 Livermore's premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.

Additionally, do not let this occurrence panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is really saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings daily, 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 problem get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the leading investments in your home that you can make.

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