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

January 18, 2016

If you have a Nest Thermostat you probably read about the recent problems and may be living in fear of being left without 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.” Obvious, much?

For complete instructions, see 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 effectively charging the battery, or turning off completely. Nest suggests recharging and restarting your thermostat to fix the issue and get it up and running again.

Symptoms of this problem include the following:

the thermostat being down on the Nest App and disconnected from Wi-Fi
the thermostat tells you 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 observe a blinking red or green light above the display)
the thermostat can’t control the corresponding heating and cooling unit(s)

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

IMPORTANT: 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, LISTEN TO THEM.)

After approximately 10 minutes of charging, unplug the Nest Thermostat from the USB cable. If the unit has turned on during this time, turn it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the Nest. Once it has completely restarted, plug it back in to finish charging. After an hour of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and reconnect it to its base.

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

If you have tried both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still having issues, you will need to bring in some experts. Enter us! If McKinley Heating Service Experts set up your Nest Thermostat, please feel free to call us at 780-800-7092 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 McKinley as one of Edmonton's premier furnace experts to fix your unit.

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

Back to blog