Don't Fear the Nest

Published on January 18, 2016

If your home has the Nest Thermostat you 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 an instructional 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 additional information, please visit their Nest Support page. For a quick summary, 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 going down completely. Nest says to try recharging and restarting your thermostat to resolve the glitch and get it up and working again.

Signs of this issue include the following:

the thermostat being down on the Nest’s mobile app and disconnected from the Wi-Fi
the thermostat notifies you that the battery is low and it needs to turn off
the thermostat’s animations 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 is dark and unresponsive (you may also have 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 will turn 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 a USB charger plugged into the wall or a computer.

ATTENTION: Do not try to 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 roughly 10 minutes of charging, detach the Nest Thermostat from the USB cord. If the thermostat has turned on while charging, power it off and then turn it back on again, manually restarting the thermostat. Once it has restarted completely, plug it back in to fully charge. After another hour of charging, unhook the Nest Thermostat and restore it to its base.

You should be be ready to go and this point, but again, for more thorough instructions and information, go to Nest Support.

If you have gone through both of these processes and the Nest Thermostat is still giving you trouble, you will need to bring in reinforcements. Enter us! If Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning set up your Nest Thermostat, please give us a call at 954-736-4314 or schedule an appointment online. If your Nest Thermostat was not put in by Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning, please reach out to Nest Support here.

Finally, do not let this situation worry you about your Nest’s reliability. By owning and properly utilizing Nest, your thermostat is actually saving money for you every day. When set it up correctly, Nest intelligently learns your lifestyle, then modifies your heating and cooling use to optimize energy savings every day, 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 leading investments in your home that you can make.

Back To Blog