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 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.” Yes, that’s really the title.

For complete instructions, go to their Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, keep on reading:

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

Symptoms of this issue 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 animations are slower than usual
the thermostat shows a message saying, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;”
the thermostat’s display is dark and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling system(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s 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 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 go into detail why, but if Nest says don’t do it, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After around 10 minutes of charging, unhook 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 thermostat. Once it has completely restarted, plug it back in to reach full charge. After another 60 minutes 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 change your thermostat, you can view our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have gone through both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in some backup. Enter us! If Pardee Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 843-410-6103 or schedule an appointment online.

And if encounter 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 Pardee as one of Charleston's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Finally, do not let this issue panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you every day. When set it up appropriately, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adjusts 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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