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

January 18, 2016

If you purchased the Nest Thermostat you may have 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 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.” Obvious, much?

For more detailed instructions, please visit 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 may be having problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the glitch and get it up and going again.

Indications of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being down on the Nest application and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat notifies 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 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 unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is turned 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 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, DO NOT DO IT.)

After roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while charging, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to reach full charge. After another 60 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base.

You should be good to go at this point, but if you've had enough 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 showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Peitz Service Experts put in your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 605-223-0307 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 could be functioning as it's meant to. You may need to call Peitz as one of Pierre's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Additionally, do not let this issue concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly using Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up appropriately, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings daily, which typically results in payback within a 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 top investments in your home that you can make.

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