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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased 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.

But fear not!

Nest Support has published an informative page with the very convenient title “What to do if your Nest Thermostat has become slow, unresponsive, or won’t turn on.” Could you crack that code?

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

Nest Thermostats that were updated recently 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 recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the issue and get it up and running again.

Signs of this glitch 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 turn itself off
the thermostat’s animated properties 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 see a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat will turn 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.

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

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the component has turned on while charging, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base.

You should be be ready to go at this point, but if you've had enough and want to change your thermostat, you can read 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 backup. Enter us! If BW/Cook Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 574-218-6404 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you've got another problem, 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 BW/Cook as one of Elkhart's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Finally, do not let this incident panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you every day. When set it up appropriately, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts 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 top investments in your home that you can make.

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