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

If you have a Nest Thermostat you have probably read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter. 

But fear no more! 

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.” Yes, that’s really the title. 

For additional information, go to Nest Support page. For a quick summary, keep on reading: 

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

Symptoms of this issue include the following: 

• The thermostat not working in the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi 

• The thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to turn itself off 
• The thermostat’s animations 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 observe 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 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer. 

CAUTION: Do not try to power on or off your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t explain why, but if Nest Support says don’t do it, LISTEN TO THEM.) 

After around 10 minutes of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the component has turned on during this time, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to finish charging. After another 60 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base. 

You should be ready to rock at this point, but  if you’re done with Nest and want to switch your thermostat, you can read 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 reinforcements. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing set up your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 866-397-3787 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 Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing as one of the U.S.‘s premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.  

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