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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you probably heard about the recent problems and may be living in fear of losing your home’s heating abilities 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.” Obvious, much?

For complete instructions, please visit Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, 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 issues, including becoming unresponsive, not effectively charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the problem and get it up and running again.

Signs of this glitch include the following:

the thermostat not working in the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi
the thermostat tells you 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 won’t light up 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 system(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s 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.

ATTENTION: 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 they say don’t do it, DON’T.)

After around 10 minutes of charging, detach 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 system. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to complete charging. After about 60 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reattach it to its base.

You should be ready to rock 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 showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in reinforcements. Enter us! If Climate Control Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 251-202-7503 or schedule an appointment online.

And if encounter another issue, like 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 Climate Control as one of Mobile's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Additionally, do not let this situation concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is really saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts 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 complication get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the leading investments in your home that you can make.

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