As far as your open/close sensors, to maximize battery life you should set it so that the “normal” (non-reporting) position is whatever position the sensor is usually in. If you have a sensor intended for normally closed and you leave that door open all the time, then, yes, it’s going to be reporting all day long and that’s going to run the battery life down. If it checks to see if it needs to report every three minutes and you leave it open for 10 hours, it’s going to report 200 times a day or more, which will not be the engineered specifications.
With regard to the strength of the mesh, unfortunately smartthings does not give us any tools for this. you can add an additional device and then use its tools But that’s a lot more work and cost.
For zwave, it’s the same thing: you have to add an additional device and then use its mapping tools
you can add an additional device and then use its tools But that’s a lot more work and cost.