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

January 18, 2016

If your home is running on the Nest Thermostat you have probably 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.

We are here to calm your fears!

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.” Could you crack that code?

For more detailed instructions, see Nest Support page. For a more basic summary, 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 effectively charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the problem and get it up and working again.

Symptoms of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being offline in the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi
the thermostat alerts you that the battery is low and it needs to shut down
the thermostat’s animated features 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 won’t light up 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 acting sluggish, 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer.

ATTENTION: Do not try to power on or off your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t explain why, but if they say don’t do it, DON’T.)

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the component has turned on during this time, shut it down 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, disconnect the Nest Thermostat and restore 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 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 reinforcements. Enter us! If Norrell Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 205-267-0023 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you've got another problem, such as 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 Norrell as one of Birmingham's premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.

Additionally, do not let this experience concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you daily. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adjusts 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 complication 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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