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

If your home has the Nest Thermostat you probably read 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 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 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 have some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not efficiently charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the glitch and get it up and working again. 

Signs of this issue include the following: 

• The thermostat being down on the Nest’s mobile app and disconnected from the Wi-Fi 

• The thermostat tells you the battery is low and it needs to shut down 
• The thermostat’s animations 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 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 system(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat is turned on but you can’t control it or it’s acting sluggish, 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. 

ATTENTION: Do not try to 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, DO NOT DO IT.) 

After approximately 10 minutes of charging, unhook 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 completely restarted, plug it back in to fully charge. After another 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 switch your thermostat, you can see 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 backup. Enter us! If Bryant Heating & Cooling Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 226-773-3357 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 may not be the problem at all. You may need to call Bryant Heating & Cooling Service Experts as one of Windsor‘s premier furnace experts to fix your system.  

Finally, do not let this experience 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 appropriately, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then alters your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings daily, 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.