I'm worried about long-term thermal wear from uneven heating, so I switch the current direction once a day. Simply because that's the maximum time I can set on a time delay relay that controls it.
Don't bother. That's not how these things fail, and one day is so so far beyond the thermal time constants involved that it's not doing anything useful. You would have to switch on timescales of seconds to minutes to do anything meaningful, and that would kill your relay in short order.
If you are truly close to the design failure point of the rectifier, it's not safe to run at all. (You are almost certainly not.)
If you are worried about the fact that you're only using one element of a multi-element package, again, it's a nonissue. We do this all the time. It's often cheaper to add a second bridge rectifier to get a single diode than it is to add another BOM line item for the "proper" part. As long as that diode isn't operating near absolute maximum ratings (it probably isn't), it doesn't matter that there are or aren't three more in the box.
note: its the additional component and its knock on effects that are the cost- not the half cent diode.
aka- you add a diode, now you have to add procurement, warehousing, extra time on the pick and place, possibly a more expensive/larger+slower one as well(so even more time), then you have wastage, labor for keeping the machine fed...
The reason I added it in the first place is because I've seen failures from uneven PCB heating. It's not the components themselves fail, but radiators get unglued and PCBs can get damaged.
If you are truly close to the design failure point of the rectifier, it's not safe to run at all. (You are almost certainly not.)
If you are worried about the fact that you're only using one element of a multi-element package, again, it's a nonissue. We do this all the time. It's often cheaper to add a second bridge rectifier to get a single diode than it is to add another BOM line item for the "proper" part. As long as that diode isn't operating near absolute maximum ratings (it probably isn't), it doesn't matter that there are or aren't three more in the box.