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

January 18, 2016

If your home has 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.

We are here to calm your fears!

Nest Support has published an instructional page 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 complete instructions, visit Nest Support page. For a more basic summary, 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 efficiently charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the issue and get it up and running again.

Symptoms of this problem include the following:

the thermostat not working in the Nest application 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 heating and cooling system(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is turned 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try to manually restart 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, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After around 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while plugged in, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has completed the restart, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and reattach 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 see 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 experts. Enter us! If Rob's Albertan Service Experts installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 780-800-9047 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you have another error, 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 Rob's Albertan as one of Edmonton's premier furnace experts to fix your system.

Finally, do not let this matter scare 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 correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies 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 prime investments in your home that you can make.

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