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The rules state one can forage for water and on a success you find enough water to fill all your water bottles. A key limiter on how often one has to look for water comes down to how many water bottles one is carrying. Since the rules don’t state how hard it is to find water bottles, I’m curious how common it is for PCs to have/find water bottles in other campaigns. I’m fine with saying to the players “ You have as many water bottles as you want to carry” but curious what others here think.

Also the Foraging specialty seems to only apply a bonus for looking for food but not water. Is that correct?

Water bottles, aka canteens, come standard at 1/PC. It's unspecified how or where a PC's other 1d6-1 rations of fresh water are stored. Given that bottles/canteens (outside of the unpriced "weapon") and jerrycans aren't listed as separate equipment, I must assume that the starting water rations the group has is its total water storage capacity (and thus the definition of "all your water bottles.") Canteens may become a high value piece of equipment to loot from defeated enemies.

I know the typical US LBE had two one-quart canteens. Most of us would have a two-quart canteen in or on our rucksacks. And if we went out for any extended period, we'd have a five-gallon water blivet with the team. The nice thing about the two-quart and the blivet is that they are collapsable so they don't take up space when they are empty. Hard canteens (like the US one-quart) would probably be more prevalent as they are sturdier than the collapsable water carriers but, like you said, canteens were probably precious artifacts and well-kept, patched, and maintained as needed.

In our campaign, we assumed that you have water bottles to carry the water you start with but that's it. If the players want to have more bottles (or any type of container) for water, they need to find it or trade for it.

Thanks for all the replies!

Just my personal rules her but I allow that a liter of water has a 1/4 encumbrance, two of which must be consumed per day in normal weather.
Similarly a standard 20 liter gas or "Jerry" can weighs in at 5 encumbrance when full, and I give it 1 encumbrance if empty or with 4 Liters or less in it.
I feel this is fairly forgiving for the carrying of water bottles or canteens but pretty restrictive for carrying around fuel.
(If youve ever lugged a full jerry can you know its a bitch weighing 18kg or about 40lbs)

Agreed on having the larger jerry cans/water bladders etc as items.

Honestly, for my games, I remove some of the crunch by just tracking the clean water rations via foundry without getting much into the specifics of micro-managing containers (especially under 10 rations, over that and I force them to have the items....cause cargo can go boom).

Part of this comes down to which army you belong to (this is relevant in regards to climate and terrain) and what role you have in that army.
For example, many European armies issue two water bottles per soldier for daily carry and extras will be issued if needed for a specific mission. Some European armies only issued one water bottle per soldier (Eastern European armies of the Cold War are a good example).
Water is easier to find in Europe so the need to carry lots of water containers isn't as necessary.

In other parts of the world, they carry more water bottles, for example, in Australia, we issue four water bottles per soldier, at least two of which need to be on your webbing/LBE and the rest on your pack. Plus you get issued a water filter and if needed, a larger capacity, collapsible water bag. Potable water is not as easily found in many areas of Australia.
Other arid nations probably follow a similar model, e.g. the South African army issued two water bottles per soldier but if I remember, they were about one and half to two times the capacity of the typical European water bottle.

As for roles, long range patrols, long range recce, long term observation posts and so on sometimes have to carry all their supplies with them so that they do not need to go out hunting for water resupply. They will be issued extra water bottles/carriers to meet this requirement.

Overall, water bottles are a fairly common piece of kit, although I was issued four (standard for the Australian Army), I ended up acquiring several more over the years so that I actually had nine of them at one point.

On this, standard issue for me in this period was always 2x 1Qt canteens on my webbing and 1x 2Qt on my ruck, regardless of what CIF gave me stuff. I generally also carried a 5-Qt bladder in the top of my ruck before I bought a CamelBak (I was one of those recon guys.) My HMMWV also routinely carried 3 Jerrycans of water for a three-man crew, which naturally we regularly resupplied from and may take one when the section put the trucks in a hide and dismounted if our C-WORMS called for it.