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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you probably read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter.

But fear not!

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.” Obvious, much?

For more detailed instructions, go to their 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 effectively charging the battery, or shutting down completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the glitch and get it up and working again.

Symptoms of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being offline 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 features 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 is black and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC 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 USB cable plugged into a wall charger or a computer.

IMPORTANT: Do not try to manually 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, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After approximately 10 minutes of charging, unhook 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 Nest. Once it has completely restarted, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, detach 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 switch your thermostat, you can see 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 experts. Enter us! If San Antonio Air Service Experts put in your Nest Thermostat, please reach out to us at 210-570-9705 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you've got another issue, like a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat is likely working as intended. You may need to call San Antonio Air as one of San Antonio's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Additionally, do not let this occurrence panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is truly 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 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 prime investments in your home that you can make.

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