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

If you have a Nest Thermostat you 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 no more! 

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, please visit Nest Support page. For a more basic overview, keep on reading: 

Nest Thermostats that were recently updated to software version 5.1.3 or later have been having some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the issue and get it up and going again. 

Indications of this problem 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 turn itself off 
  • The thermostat’s animated properties 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 dark and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display) 
  • The thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling unit(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat will turn on but you can’t control it or it’s running slow, try manually restarting it by 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. 

ATTENTION: Do not try to restart your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t explain why, but if Nest Support says don’t do it, DON’T.) 

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the component has turned on while charging, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to reach full charge. After another hour of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat and reattach it to its base. 

You should be good 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 gone through both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still giving you trouble, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Stevenson Service Experts put in your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 614-334-3192 or schedule an appointment online. 

And if you’ve got another problem, like a warning from Nest that your furnace is shutting down, then your thermostat is likely working as intended. You may need to call Stevenson Service Experts as one of Columbus‘s premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.  

Additionally, do not let this situation panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you daily. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then alters your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings every day, which typically results in payback within the first 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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