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

January 18, 2016

If you have a 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 no more!

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.” Obvious, much?

For more detailed instructions, go to their Nest Support page. For a quick summary, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were updated recently to software version 5.1.3 or later have been having some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or shutting down completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the issue and get it up and working again.

Indications of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being offline in the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi
the thermostat notifies you that the battery is low and it needs to turn 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 dark and unresponsive (you may also see a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is turned on but you can’t control it or it’s performing slow, 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer.

CAUTION: 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, DON’T.)

After about 10 minutes of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the thermostat has turned on while plugged in, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to fully charge. After another hour of charging, disconnect 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 change your thermostat, you can see 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 some experts. Enter us! If Strand Brothers Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 512-592-3072 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you have another issue, 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 Strand Brothers as one of Austin's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Also, do not let this issue concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you daily. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings daily, which typically results in payback within a year. 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 prime investments in your home that you can make.

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