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

If you have a Nest Thermostat you have probably 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 an informative page 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 information, see Nest Support page. For a quick summary, 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 efficiently charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the issue and get it up and working again. 

Symptoms of this issue include the following: 

• The thermostat being offline in the Nest application 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 message saying, “Please remove the thermostat from its base, then reattach it;” 
• The thermostat’s display is dark 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 system(s) 

If your Nest Thermostat is on but you can’t control it or it’s running slow, 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 USB cord plugged into a wall charger or a computer. 

IMPORTANT: 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 approximately 10 minutes of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat from the USB charger. If the unit has turned on while plugged in, shut it down and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the system. Once it has completed the restart, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, disconnect the Nest Thermostat and reattach it to its base. 

You should be be ready to go at this point, but  if you’re done with Nest and want to switch your thermostat, you can read our comparison of common thermostats.  

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still showing signs of problems, you will need to bring in some backup. Enter us! If Aramendia Plumbing, Heating and Air installed your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 210-404-4233 or schedule an appointment online. 

And if you’ve got another issue, 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 Aramendia Plumbing, Heating and Air as one of San Antonio‘s premier furnace experts to fix your system.  

Finally, do not let this incident concern 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 properly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then adapts your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings every day, 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 incident get you down. You were smart to invest in a Nest, because a smart thermostat is still one of the best investments in your home that you can make.