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

January 18, 2016

If you have a Nest Thermostat you may have heard about the recent problems and may be living in fear of losing your home’s heating abilities 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.” Yes, that’s really the title.

For more detailed instructions, go to their Nest Support page. For a quick overview, keep on reading:

Nest Thermostats that were recently updated to software version 5.1.3 or later may have some problems, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest recommends recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the glitch and get it up and running again.

Indications of this issue 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 shut down
the thermostat’s animations are slower than usual
the thermostat shows a message saying, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;”
the thermostat’s display won’t light up and unresponsive (you may also observe a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC system(s)

If your Nest Thermostat will turn on but you can’t control it or it’s slow, 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.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try to manually 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 about 10 minutes of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat from the USB charger. If the unit has turned on while charging, 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 fully charge. After another hour of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat and reattach 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 view 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 Parker Pearce Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please reach out to us at 301-476-4577 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you have another error, such as 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 Parker Pearce as one of Gaithersburg's premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.

Also, do not let this matter scare you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you all hours of the day. When set it up properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies 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 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.

Back to blog