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

January 18, 2016

If your home is running on the Nest Thermostat you may have heard 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 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 additional information, visit Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, 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 have been having some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not efficiently charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the problem and get it up and going again.

Indications of this problem include the following:

the thermostat not working in the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat notifies you that the battery is low and it needs to turn itself off
the thermostat’s animated features 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 is black and unresponsive (you may also see a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer.

PLEASE READ: 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, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB charger. If the unit has turned on while plugged in, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to reach full charge. After another 60 minutes of charging, unhook 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 swap your thermostat, you can see our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in reinforcements. Enter us! If Stevenson Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please reach out to us at 614-334-3192 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 is likely working as intended. You may need to call Stevenson Service Experts as one of Columbus's premier furnace experts to fix your system.

Additionally, do not let this experience scare you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you daily. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings constantly, which typically results in payback within the first year. 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 best investments in your home that you can make.

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