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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you have probably 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.

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, go to 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 may be having problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the glitch and get it up and going again.

Symptoms of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being down on the Nest’s mobile app and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to shut itself down
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 black 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 performing slow, try manually restarting it and turn 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.

CAUTION: 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 around 10 minutes of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the thermostat 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 reach full charge. After another 60 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base.

You should be be ready to go at this point, but you can't get it to work and want to change your thermostat, you can see our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Fras-Air/General Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 908-448-2154 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 Fras-Air/General as one of Hillsborough's premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.

Finally, do not let this incident panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you every day. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies 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 incident get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the best investments in your home that you can make.

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