First off, most outdoor receptacles plus concrete floor pole buildings and several other locations require GFCI protection if your jurisdiction had adopted any of the later NEC's BUT THATS JUST A STATEMENT that may or may not hold true or be required in your jurisdiction, I'm ONLY saying, do as you please, this is intended as engineering information only, NOT to start a code discussion. Use GFCI fine, don't use GFCI fine, it's your choice.
Second, it only takes in the vicinity of around 5 +/- milliamps of current leakage to trip a GFCI and nuisance tripping can indeed be a problem as you have found. Moisture, dirt, contamination, insulation failure, material breakdown and other things can cause the trip. The GFCI may be working perfect and doing its job you know!!!!
If the current flowing in the ungrounded conductor on your heater isn't all being returned (within 5 +/- milliamps) by the grounded conductor (its leaking elsewhere), that can trip the GFCI. Such a fault/leakage path may or may not be easily determinable, depending on your test instrument. There should be like an open circuit (approaching infinity resistance on some meters) from the heater to electrical paths other then the grounded and ungrounded conductors. If there's a fault leakage path elsewhere that's conducting more then 5 milliamps, the GFCI is designed to trip.
Its common for inexpensive poor quality GFCI's to go bad, so you may want to try a new one if you fail to find that your block heater is defective. You might try a few manual test and resets as I have seen that help to some extent. Similar you may try to clean the heater and its plug and cord and connectors free of dirt or moisture that might help.
Finally, if you cant find a problem with the heater or it has no current leaks/faults (maybe try a different one) ,,,,,,,,,the GFCI itself isn't at fault (maybe try a new one),,,,,,,,,cleaning and test and resets don't help,,,,,,,,,, you can try a non GFCI if you choose.
NOTE a GFCI can be wired such that downstream outlets and connections after the GFCI are also protected, what's on your GFCI circuit at this time??? Do other appliances besides your block heater cause the GFCI to trip??? I take it she only trips when you plug a load into it correct???
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