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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you may have read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of being left without 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 more detailed instructions, see Nest Support page. For a more basic summary, 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 problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the problem and get it up and running again.

Signs of this problem include the following:

the thermostat not working in the Nest’s mobile app and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to turn 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 observe 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 acting sluggish, try manually restarting it by 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.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try to manually 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, DO NOT DO IT.)

After around 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB charger. If the thermostat has turned on while charging, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to fully charge. After another hour of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base.

You should be good to go at this point, but if you've had enough and want to swap your thermostat, you can read 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 experts. Enter us! If Comfortech Service Experts put in your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 601-852-3105 or schedule an appointment online.

And if encounter another problem, such as a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat may not be the problem at all. You may need to call Comfortech as one of Jackson's premier furnace experts to fix your system.

Finally, do not let this issue panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is really saving money for you daily. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adjusts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings every day, 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 complication 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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