Those radios work well with the VirtualWire or RadioHead libraries. Experiment with the provided simple examples and make sure you understand them before adapting to your project.
Range depends almost entirely on the antenna and line of sight conditions. I get over 300 meters range with those modules (doing similar reporting jobs) with a balanced dipole antenna, as shown in the photo below.
Connect one interior end of the antenna to ANT and the other to GND on both TX and RX, with very short wires if necessary. For 433 MHz, the antenna should be about 33 cm from tip to tip.