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 issues and may be living in fear of being left without heat in the dead of winter.

But fear no more!

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 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 may have some issues, including becoming unresponsive, not correctly charging the battery, or going down completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to rectify the glitch and get it up and working again.

Signs of this problem include the following:

the thermostat not working in the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi
the thermostat notifies you that the battery is low and it needs to shut itself down
the thermostat’s animated properties 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 won’t light up and unresponsive (you may also have a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding HVAC unit(s)

If your Nest Thermostat is turned 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 USB cord plugged into a wall charger or a computer.

PLEASE READ: Do not try to power on or off your thermostat while it’s still connected to a computer for charging. (They didn’t elaborate why, but if Nest Support says don’t do it, DO NOT DO IT.)

After about 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB charger. If the thermostat has turned on while charging, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has fully restarted, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base.

You should be ready to rock at this point, but if you've had enough and want to switch your thermostat, you can see 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 backup. Enter us! If TML Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 208-488-4892 or schedule an appointment online.

And if you have another problem, 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 TML as one of Boise's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

Additionally, do not let this situation panic you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly operating Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you every day. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings daily, 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 complication 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