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

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you may have heard 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. 

We are here to calm your fears! 

Nest Support has published a page with step by step instructions 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 additional information, go to 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 may have some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the problem and get it up and going again. 

Indications of this glitch include the following: 

• The thermostat being down on the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi 

• The thermostat notifies 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 notification 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 HVAC unit(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s slow, try manually restarting it beginning with 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 cord plugged into a wall charger 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, DON’T.) 

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the component has turned on during this time, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has completed the restart, plug it back in to finish charging. After about 60 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base. 

You should be be ready to go at this point, but  if you’ve had enough and want to switch your thermostat, you can view our comparison of common thermostats.  

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in some backup. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing put in your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 866-397-3787 or schedule an appointment online. 

And if you have another problem, like 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 Service Experts Heating, Air Conditioning & Plumbing as one of the U.S.‘s premier furnace experts to fix your system.  

Finally, do not let this incident worry you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you every day. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adjusts 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.