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

January 18, 2016

If your home has the Nest Thermostat you have probably heard about the recent outages and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter.

But fear no more!

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 information, go to Nest Support page. For a quick overview, keep on reading:

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

Signs 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 features 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 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 is on but you can’t control it or it’s 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 cable plugged into a wall charger 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 approximately 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the unit has turned on while charging, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to complete charging. After about 60 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base.

You should be be ready to go at this point, but if you've had enough and want to swap your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.

If you have attempted both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If Atmostemp Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please reach out to us at 856-310-4824 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 may not be the problem at all. You may need to call Atmostemp as one of Voorhees's premier furnace experts to fix your hvac.

Also, do not let this matter concern you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is honestly saving money for you daily. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings constantly, 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 top investments in your home that you can make.

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