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

January 18, 2016

If your home is running on the Nest Thermostat you may have heard about the recent problems 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 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, please visit Nest Support page. For a quick summary, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were recently updated to software version 5.1.3 or later have been having some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not efficiently charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the problem and get it up and running again.

Indications of this issue include the following:

the thermostat not working in 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 down
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 black 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 system(s)

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

CAUTION: Do not try to power on or off 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 approximately 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while plugged in, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has restarted completely, 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 ready to rock at this point, but you can't get it to work and want to change your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have attempted both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still giving you trouble, you will need to bring in some backup. Enter us! If R & M Climate Control Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 865-229-6176 or schedule an appointment online.

And if encounter another error, 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 R & M Climate Control as one of Knoxville's premier furnace experts to fix your system.

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

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