4th of July, septic system day

No, I'm not being unpatriotic.
A septic system expert once recommended to me to use the 4th of July and Thanksgiving as reminder days for switching between leech lines in my septic field. There are two lines and switching approx. every six months gives the soil around them an opportunity to dry out and 'rest' to maintain efficiency.
Don't know how accurate that advice is but I do the switch and have never had a problem in eight years or the six years prior to our buying the house. So, I'm not about to stop the practice to find out if it works or not.

Good reminder, but must be specific to different parts of the country. We only had one leech field growing up, no separate lines. There was a time when we had a separate tank field for gray water, but that was before they did away with all the phosphors in detergents.

what? I've never heard of having a switch on your septic bed.
We had two septic tanks growing up (main one + a small one for the laundry room addition) and there were not multiple leach lines.

I'm living with my first experience with a septic tank.... growing up, we just dug another hole and moved the outhouse over a bit.... dish water and wash water just got dumped in the yard... I know, I know, not sanitary, but we lived so far back in the woods.... after I grew up and moved into town, always had the city sewer.... now we have a septic and only one leech field...

Art Mulder said:

what? I've never heard of having a switch on your septic bed.
We had two septic tanks growing up (main one + a small one for the laundry room addition) and there were not multiple leach lines.

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I hadn't heard of it either before moving to this house. I have had two other houses on septics in Arkansas before moving to this one. Most of the leech fields that I was familiar with had four to eight lines coming off the tank and provided the needed drainage. This house has three blue plastic tubes sticking up in the yard. Very ugly, I hate them. One is for the switch over valve. The other two are inspection tubes at the ends of the leech lines. I dunno what one is supposed to inspect through them. Mebbe if they don't drain water will show instead of going into the ground. They are the only two lines and change over periodically is reccomended to keep them in good order. Or so I'm told.